qualities in their make-up. They express negation, doubt, fear, uncertainty, everything that is opposed to creative power. They have never gotten hold of themselves, never developed their dormant possibilities, never asserted the divinity within them, and so have fallen to the rear.

The chief reason why so many of us go through life doing things which are out of all proportion to what we are capable of doing is because we do not half believe in ourselves. If we only had enough courage, enough of the dare in our nature to begin things which we know we ought to do, then our pride would force us on. The thought of the humiliation which would follow defeat after we had once declared our purpose would brace our lagging spirit and keep us to our task.

When a man really believes in himself, when he feels that he can do what he undertakes, his courage is wonderfully increased, and it is courage that leads the other faculties.

The Spartan mothers kept the idea of courage and fearlessness constantly in the youth's mind. He was taught to be brave under all circumstances. This had a great deal to do with the sturdy Spartan character. The Roman youth did not fear death.

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once."

Success is impossible for the man who is fearful, who hesitates to decide, who is always weighing,

balancing, and reconsidering, who is never sure of himself, but must continually ask the advice or opinion of others as to what he shall do. He carries no weight nor conviction. No one believes in him because he does not believe in himself.

"Lacking courage it is impossible for one to prove his convictions; without the courage of his convictions a man's initiative dies; when initiative is detroyed one loses power for leadership; and when capacity for leadership is lost the individual is at once relegated to the ranks as an ordinary wage earner, and is thereafter unlikely as a success possibility."

No one can be courageous who does not believe in himself. A man must have faith in his ability to do the thing he undertakes before he can show courage in it; for courage is simply the consciousness of power, of the ability to meet emergencies, to cope with obstacles.

If one would be a king instead of a slave one must try to think as a king, and to act like one. To awaken a sense of courage in the mind one must think courage thoughts; must try to think and act like a man of courage.

There are many ways in which we can cultivate courage, through the avenue of self-respect, through self-faith, self-confidence. In other words, we can cultivate and strengthen courage or any other faculty by approaching it in different direc

tions, by cultivating its branches, or the qualities of which it is made up.

Some one has said that most people who fail in life do so because of the lack of some one quality which is but one forty-secondth of all the mental faculties. Although we may have forty-two strong faculties or qualities, if we are deficient in only one —self-confidence—we are more than likely to fail, for the man or woman without this essential quality is the plaything of chance, the puppet of environment, the slave of circumstances.

One of the best substitutes for genius is selfconfidence. It is through faith in ourselves that we touch infinite power. Self-faith sees opportunities, powers, and resources which kill doubts and fears. If we had a consummate faith in ourselves we should not hesitate to begin the things which we long to do, and which we know we ought to do.

The man who loses heart and becomes suspicious of his own ability is shorn of the very power necessary to realize his dreams, because no one can do a bigger thing than he thinks he can. The results of a man's efforts will never rise higher than his self-confidence.

The world is often amazed at the marvelous achievement of a very ordinary person who has tremendous self-faith. The example of Joan of Arc illustrates a great law, just as the falling of the apple suggested to Newton the law of gravitation. It shows that under ordinary conditions we use only

a very small percentage of our possible power; that we do not begin to do the things we could do if we were inspired by great faith, by supreme self-confidence.

Men of force and courage, who have faith in themselves, may take false steps, may make mistakes, sometimes serious ones, but in a lifetime they accomplish infinitely more than the negative, timid character, who never dares to push ahead, who has not enough confidence in himself to trust his own powers. It is ever the bold, self-reliant character, the man of strong convictions who is victorious.

Self-faith, dead-in-earnestness, downright hard work and daring have ever accomplished the seemingly impossible.

It is said that after Gladstone's first defeat in Parliament, which overturned the Government and threw him out of power, he would come to his desk every morning with the same sublime self-confidence, the same faith in the justness of his cause and of his final victory.

To great souls there is no such thing as failure in the right. Apparent defeat is but a temporary delay; they know that success treads on the heels of every right effort, that every germ will struggle into flower and fruitage.

When Cyrus W. Field was thirty-four years old he had retired from business with a fortune. With practically all the scientific men of his day advising

against the practicability of laying a cable across the Atlantic Ocean, this man's faith in himself exhausted his own fortune and took him across the Atlantic more than fifty times before the days of the ocean greyhound. His faith in himself and in his idea held him to his task through disheartening failures, reverses, and delays. On the very day which he thought would crown his struggles with success, when he thought his great work was completed, the cable parted in mid-ocean, but still he did not lose faith in final achievement and in the end successfully carried out his plans.

When Louisa M. Alcott was first dreaming of her power, her father handed her a manuscript one day that had been rejected by James T. Field, editor of the "Atlantic Monthly," with the message:

"Tell Louisa to stick to her teaching; she can never succeed as a writer."

"Tell him I will succeed as a writer, and some day I shall write for the 'Atlantic,'" was the undaunted reply of the courageous young woman. She later earned two hundred thousand dollars by her pen.

"Twenty years ago," she wrote in her diary, "I resolved to make the family independent if I could. At forty that is done. My debts are all paid, even the outlawed ones, and we have enough to be comfortable."

The conclusion to "An Old-Fashioned Girl" was