What wonderful examples we have in the supposedly good-for-nothings, the criminals even, who have been converted to Christianity and made selfrespecting, self-supporting members of society. How many men who have been a positive menace to society, all at once, when the spark of hope awoke their sleeping natures, have turned about face and become healthful, useful, successful citizens again!

Some of the most useful men in the history of the world, men who have left a tremendous impress on human lives, were once down-and-outs, failures. Something touched them, awakened the God within and they turned their faces from despair to hope, from discouragement to expectation of grander things. It may have been a book they read, a word of encouragement or a little kindness that inspired them to make something of their lives. Whatever it was, it made just the difference between success and failure. It started them on the right road, turned them from ugliness to beauty, from wrong to right, from a life of dissipation to a career of usefulness. This little thing it was that made all the difference between a miserable liability and a glorious asset to society.

We each must make our own fight, make and keep our own resolutions, conquer our own weaknesses and vices. Nobody can do those things for us, although they may encourage us. So far as real improvement is concerned, so far as our actual ma

terial salvation is concerned, each of us might just as well be the only living being on a desert island with only water around and sky above.

If you have any lack in your nature, if you are poor, if you lack money to go to college or to start in business, if you lack influence, that is all the more reason why you should call out the best that is in you and determine that no handicap shall cripple your life or hinder your progress. It is not a very difficult thing to overcome a handicap. It is just a question of determination, of clear grit and will. This is the best substitute for capital, for beauty, for influence.

You may be poor, you may have nobody to push you or encourage you; but if you have will and determination you can defy the world. You can put them in the place of capital or influence. They will help you when friends fail you, when others desert you.

History shows that the men and women who have done the most to help the world along have developed their characters through contact with inhospitable and apparently unfriendly environment.

Great inventors worked for years amid want and woe and frightful discouragements—denounced by relatives, misunderstood by friends—to produce something that will ameliorate the hard conditions of life. Compare their resolute determination with the namby-pamby, milk-and-water desire of some of our easy-going, invertebrate youth who would

like to do something, if it does not cost much in effort or sacrifice or time.

There is a vast difference between merely desiring to do a certain thing, and clenching one's teeth and one's fists with a resolute determination to do it.

The great miracles of civilization have been wrought by the men who had so set their heart on their aim that nothing could keep them from pressing on.

What can you do with a man who has such a passion for achieving his heart's desire that he braves innumerable dangers, starvation, and death even, rather than give up?

When a man is willing to stake all of his future, his property, his reputation, everything he possesses in the world, even existence itself, upon the fulfillment of his heart's desire, there isn't much you can do with him but let him go ahead.

Obstacles look large or small to the man in proportion to his strength and determination to master them. If a little man, they look large; if a large man, difficulties look small in comparison with the advantage of what he longs for and what he proposes. The harder things go, the greater the obstacles, the greater is the grit to annihilate them.

Some people look upon every setback as final, or else they regard it as an indication that they are not made of winning stuff. But the man who sits down and whines and grumbles at his lot because

he happens to fail is made of weak material. There is not much in him.

"What's brave, what's noble, let's do it after the high Roman fashion, and make death proud to take us."

Defeat is only a temporary incident with those who are bound to win. They never think of regarding it as final. They look upon it as a mere slip, and they get up with renewed resolution, more determined than ever to go on.

TAKING HABIT INTO

PARTNERSHIP

Habit tends to make us permanently what we are for the moment.

The great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.

For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous.

In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible.

Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.

Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain.—Professor William James.

A

FRIEND of General Grant's, in a maga

zine article, relates the following conversation he had with him while sitting at the campfire late one night, after every one else had gone to bed.

"General, it seems singular that you have gone through all the tumble of army service and frontier life and have never been provoked into swearing. I have never heard you utter an oath or use an imprecation."