a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

The physiological study of mental conditions is thus the most powerful ally of hortatory ethics. The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, "I won't count this time!" Well! he may not count it and a kind heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering it, and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work. Let no youth have any anxiety

about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently, between all the details of his business, the power of judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that will never pass away. Young people should know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faint-heartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together.

HOW TO STUDY

BY FRANCIS CUMMINS LOCKWOOD

I

THE American wizard, Thomas Edison, frequently becomes so absorbed in the work of his laboratory that he forgets all about his meals, and occasionally even goes without sleep for long periods in order that he may hold his mind uninterruptedly to a given task. Sir William Hamilton, the great Scotch philosopher, gives like instances of mental absorption on the part of certain scholars of the past. Some of these stories are so interesting that they are worth repeating here.

"Archimedes, it is well known, was so absorbed in a geometrical meditation that he was first aware of the storming of Syracuse by his own death-wound, and his exclamation on the entrance of Roman soldiers was - Noli turbare cir

culos meos. In like manner, Joseph Scaliger, the most learned of men, when a Protestant student in Paris, was so engrossed in the study of Homer that he became aware of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and of his own escape, only on the day subsequent to the catastrophe. The philosopher, Carneades, was habitually liable to fits of meditation so profound that, to prevent him from sinking from inanition, his maid found it necessary to feed him like a child. And it is reported of Newton that, while engaged in his mathematical researches, he sometimes forgot to dine. Cardan, one of the most illustrious of philosophers

and mathematicians, was once, upon a journey, so lost in thought that he forgot both his way and the object of his journey. To the question of his driver whither he should proceed, he made no answer, and when he came to himself at nightfall, he was surprised to find the carriage at a standstill and directly under a gallows."

No doubt such stories seem queer to the American college student of our day, for we are not accustomed to associate mental application with the term college student. Says Professor Lounsbury of Yale- and he is writing about a college student - "We must view with profound respect | the infinite capacity of the human mind to resist the introduction of useful knowledge." And it was another New England professor who said to me in a letter not long ago, "We take great care of the Freshman's body now-a-daysmake him strip and pass a physical examination, and thump him all over, then give him required courses in hygiene, and make him go through stunts in the gymnasium every day. I think it is time we taught him to use what he calls his mind."

I wonder sometimes if we parents and professors are not ourselves a good deal to blame for the thriftless mental habits of our students. It seems to me that we have taken too little pains to direct them in the art of study and to come to some semblance of an agreement as to what constitutes the essentials of collegiate education. Not undeserved was that biting sarcasm in a British newspaper to the effect “that in University matters, as in social and political affairs, America does not know where she is going, but is determined to get there." Indeed, it was a professor who wrote, "The collective unwisdom of a college faculty is not often exceeded by an individual student." And as an indication of

the fact that college authorities may be very obtuse, and that college students may be very acute, I may allude to that copy of the catalogue of a certain institution, wherein some student had added as rule 119 in the regulations, "Any student who can understand these rules will be granted a degree without further examination." At any rate, whoever is at fault, it is high time that we should set ourselves to remedy defects that are apparent to all.

- he

If a man is not a student, he has no right to a place in college. A man gets into a college in order to learn, just as a seaman gets into a ship in order to sail the seas. If the sailor will not go aloft - will not rub and scrub has no right to be on board. And just so a student, if he will not read and write, and grub and think, has no excuse whatever for being in a college. The college that allows men that do not study, and who have no intention of studying, to remain enrolled in long-continued idleness is degrading itself, robbing the student, and betraying the state.

II

And what are the real aims of study? The object of study is, in the first place, to get fast and firm possession of facts

facts of spelling, reading, mathematics, composition, history, language, geography, and the like. It is highly desirable that we should know how to spell Chicago and business; Boston and brains; and that we should know for all time. We want to know once for all that seven times nine are sixty-three; that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation; that an island is a body of land completely surrounded by water; and that a proper name should begin with a capital letter. Many, many,