block your way, do not get discouraged. The obstacles that look so formidable at a distance will grow smaller and smaller as you approach. Have courage and confidence in yourself and the road will clear before you as you advance. Read the life stories of great men who from the start have cleared their pathway of obstructions which make yours look puny. Magnify your faith in yourself and will minimize the obstacles in your way. you

The whole science of efficiency and success in life consists in the vigorous, persistent affirmation of our determination and our ability to do the thing we have set our heart on. It consists in setting our face like a flint toward our goal, turning neither to the right nor the left, though a Paradise tempt us, or failure and disaster threaten us.

If your determination is easily deflected, if any persuasion can separate you from your life resolve, you may be pretty sure that you are on the wrong track.

Ill health or personal deformity may sometimes hold one back—though there are numerous instances of success in spite of them—but in the vast majority of cases where young people fail in getting a good start in life or in ultimately reaching their goal it is because there is no energy in their resolution, no grit in their determination. They peter out after a few rebuffs. Two or three setbacks take the edge off their determination. They do not realize that success in anything worth

while is the result of tremendous resolution, vigorous self-faith, and work, work, work—steady, conscientious, whole-hearted, unremitting work. Light resolve, half-hearted efforts, indifferent, intermittent work have never yet accomplished anything and never will.

"Mere wishes and desires but engender a sort of green sickness in young minds, unless they are promptly embodied in act and deed," says Samuel Smiles. "It will not avail merely to wait, as so many do, 'until Blucher comes up,' but they must struggle on and persevere in the meantime, as Wellington did. The good purpose once formed must be carried out with alacrity and without swerving. He who allows his application to falter, or shirks his work on frivolous pretexts, is on the sure road to ultimate failure."

Get busy, then, and work with all your might. There is no such thing as failure for the willing, ambitious worker.

Work, which many have called a curse, is really the salvation of the race. It is the greatest educator. There is no other way of developing power, calling out the resources, building stamina and breadth of character. Work is the great saviour of the race. Without it we should be a backboneless and staminaless, characterless race.

Emerson says: "Men talk of victory as of some. thing fortunate. Work is victory. Wherever work is done victory is obtained."

The man

"Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And breasts the billows of circumstance And grapples with his evil star"

will tower above his fellows.

Energy of will distinguishes such a man as surely as muscular power distinguishes a lion.

"He who has a firm will," says Goethe, "molds the world to himself."

"People do not lack strength," says Victor Hugo, "they lack will."

Of Julius Cæsar it was said by a contemporary that it was his activity and giant determination rather than his military skill, that won his victories. The youth who starts out in life determined to make the most of his eyes and let nothing escape him which he can possibly use for his own advancement; who keeps his ears open for every sound that can help him on his way, who keeps his hands open that he may clutch every opportunity, who is ever on the alert for everything which can help him to get on in the world, who seizes every experience in life and grinds it up into paint for his great life's picture, who keeps his heart open that he may catch every noble impulse, and everything which may inspire him, that youth will be sure to make his life successful; there are no "ifs" or "ands" about it. If he has his health, nothing can keep him from final success.

No tyranny of circumstances can permanently imprison a determined will.

The world always stands aside for the determined man. Will makes a way, even through seeming impossibilities. "It is the half a neck nearer that shows the blood and wins the race: the one march more that wins the campaign: the five minutes more of unyielding courage that wins the fight."

HOW TO TALK WELL—A

TREMENDOUS ASSET

Many a man owes his advancement largely to his ability to converse well.

There is no other one thing which enables us to make so good an impression, especially upon those who do not know us thoroughly, as the ability to converse well.

The art of arts is to be a good converser. To be able to interest people, to rivet their attention, to draw them to you by the very superiority of your conversational powers, is to be the possessor of a priceless accomplishment.

T

HE monk, Basle, according to a quaint

legend, died while under the ban of excommunication by the Pope, and was sent in charge of an angel to find his place in the nether world. But the monk's genial disposition and his great conversational powers won friends whereever he went. The fallen angels adopted his manner, and even the good angels went a long way to see him and live with him. He was removed to the lowest depths of Hades, but with the same result. His kindness of heart and charm of speech were irresistible, and changed the hell into a heaven. At length the angel returned with the monk, saying that no place could be found in which to punish him. He still remained the same Basle.