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the great game of life with an antagonist, and that that antagonist is an old man with a scythe— that you are playing a game with Time? Do you ever think that every hour, every moment you waste is a false move in the game? Did you ever realize that when you have wasted a day, you have wasted a part of your life; and that you can never redeem it, never make good the loss, because all you can possibly do is to live the life of each day in the day. Whatever time you lose is lost forever.

"The whole period of youth," said Ruskin, "is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction. There is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies—not a moment of which, once passed, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron.

Youth is the time in which we can do most to enrich life. Every hour of youth is fraught with golden possibilities. Every day Nature gives all of us a new chance for more splendid endeavor, and yet how many accept a new day with its superb possibilities as just a repetition of the monotonous, uneventful days that have gone before! How often do we hear people say in the morning, "Well, here is another day's grind ahead of me!" And so it is for them; for "as a man thinketh so is he."

If those people instead of growling would form the habit when they first rise of saying: "Now, this day certainly does look good to me. I anticipate splendid things to-day. I am going to meet

pleasant people, and have some pleasant surprises, rich new experiences. I am going to make the most of this day, for I know that there are great possibilities locked up in it. Other men have got wonderful things out of a single day, and why can't I?"

I know an invalid lady who says that she can scarcely wait for the splendid things to transpire during the day which she anticipates when she wakes in the morning. She says she feels every morning as though she was going on a journey which she had never taken before, and that she expects all sorts of delightful surprises, of new and thrilling experiences.

Now, if a day means so much to this poor, shut-in invalid, what should it mean to us, to those of us who have all our senses intact, and who are in good health? If a day seems so good to a cripple confined to the house, it certainly ought to mean a great deal more to those of us who can walk and run, who can go where we please, do what we please.

It is wonderfully helpful to take a few moments every morning to express gratitude to our Creator for the wonderful gift of life itself, and for health, for being normal, able to see and hear and feel and think and do. We should be filled with gratitude for the chance to unfold, to develop our wonderful possibilities.

Each day is to us what the block of pure Italian marble is to the sculptor. We can call out of it

what we will—beauty or ugliness, angel or devil, or we can smite it with the mallet and shiver it

to atoms.

As the sun rises every soul is born again, and the new day gives us a chance to begin all over again. We can do and be what we will to do and be for the entire day. We can make it a red-letter day. This is the way of growth. And if life does not mean growth, enlargement to us, then we have missed its higher meaning.

To-day is the day that decides your destiny, not yesterday and not to-morrow. To-day is the marble you are working on. Every thought, every act, every motive, is a chisel stroke with which you are carving something out of your life marble. You carve out what you see, what you build in your mind; you carve out the model that dwells there to guide your acts.

Don't regret the past, or dream too much of the future, but live in the present. Get your lesson from the hour.

Remember that yesterday is dead. To-morrow is not yet born. The only time that belongs to you is the passing moment.

No matter what happens or does not happen, what comes or does not come, resolve that you will extract from every experience of the day something of good, something that will make you wiser and show you how to make fewer mistakes to-morrow. Say to yourself, "This day I begin a new life. I

will forget everything in the past that caused me pain, grief, discouragement, or disgrace."

No matter what the past has been, how unfortunate, no matter what your mistakes, or what golden opportunities you let slip by, there is nothing in that wreckage for you now. You have gotten out of it all that is now possible—the experience which ought to give you greater wisdom, so that you will not make similar mistakes again. The only possible way in which any human being can get anything out of this life that is worth while is by forgetting the past and flinging one's very soul into the doing of the present duty, the thing in hand. Your opportunity is not in the wreckage of the past, but it is in the potency of the passing moment. Seize the instant as it passes and wring from it every possibility. This is the only way to make your life count.

CAN YOU FINANCE

YOURSELF

As much wisdom can be expended on private economy as on an empire.—Emerson.

Beware of little extravagances. A small leak will sink a big ship.—Franklin.

Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into it, but hard enough to get out.—Shaw.

If you want to test a young man and ascertain whether nature made him for a king or a subject, give him a thousand dollars and see what he will do with it.—Parton.

Whatever be your talents, whatever be your prospects, never speculate away on a chance of a palace that which you may need as a provision against the workhouse.—Bulwer.

"The mill can never grind with the water that has passed."

I

N AN address on "The Greater Thrift" delivered before the National Education Asso

ciation at its last annual convention in New York, S. W. Strauss, President of the American Society for Thrift, made this statement:

"We are teaching our boys and girls arithmetic, history, and geography—our agricultural schools are teaching them to till the soil scientifically, and to develop the resources of the land through education. We are teaching household economics. We are teaching morality and hygiene. We are teaching everything worth while but Practical Thrift and I say to you, my friends, that we are

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