compelled to bring out the highest and best in him in. his very effort to obtain that which he would possess. It is the never-ending demand for adjustment to surrounding circumstances; it is the constant drill in the round of petty details; it is the perpetual call upon our readiness of intellect; it is the unceasing necessity for quick decision and prompt action, which develops the

man.

Defeats and failures are great developers of character. They have made the giants of our race by giving Titanic muscles, brawny sinews, and far-reaching intellects. "I was not rocked and dandled into a legislator," said Burke; "nitor in adversum' is the motto for a man like me."

Poverty often hides her charms under an ugly mask; yet thousands have been forced into greatness by their very struggle to keep the wolf from the door. She is often the only agent Nature can employ to call man out of himself. Nature cares little for his ease and pleasure; it is the man she is after, and she will pay any price or resort to any expedient to allure him. She masks her own disciplinary ends in man's wants. She coaxes and leads him ever onward, by discovering new wants; and the struggle to gratify these wants develops. the very character she desires.

Much maligned want is one of the greatest schoolmasters of our race. It has educated men from obscurity, and led them up through the wilderness of difficulty into the land of promise. What brave souls has it revealed, what unselfish devotion begotten! It found Poussin painting signboards on the road to Paris, and made him one of the greatest of artists. found Chantry, the sculptor, driving a donkey with milk cans on its back to supply his mother's customers, and made him one of the greatest sculptors of the century. It sent Richard Foley fiddling and splitting nails on his way to Sweden to learn the Swedish

It

way of nail-splitting. It found a Homer wandering on the shores of Greece, and made him sing the Iliad of all time. It saw a boy Shakespeare holding horses at the theatre door, and wrung from him the immortal "Hamlet." Over what a university greater than all others has it grandly presided. What statesmen, what philosophers, what scholars, what authors, what philanthropists, what merchants, have been graduated from its halls, proud to call it Alma Mater!

Men are naturally lazy, and require some great stimulus to goad their flagging ambitions and enable them to overcome the inertia which comes from ease and the consciousness of inherited wealth. Whatever lessens in a young man the feeling that he must make his way in the world cripples his chance of success. Poverty has ever been the priceless spur that has goaded man up to his own loaf.

Misfortune has forced into prominence many a man otherwise unknown. "When God would educate a man, He compels him to learn bitter lessons. He sends him to school to the necessities rather than to the graces, that, by knowing all suffering, he may know also the eternal consolation."

No education is adequate to the needs of life which does not produce decision of character, courage, selfcontrol, and perseverance.

"The fruit of liberal education," says C. W. Eliot, "is not learning, but the capacity and desire to learn; not knowledge, but power."

To live in America, Emerson's "land of opportunity," is an inspiration, an education in itself. How can any man be idle in a land whose very climate is a tonic stimulating to effort, whose countless noble examples. beckon us onward, and whose untold resources invite to the display of energy in every direction?

CHAPTER XXV.

BOOKS.

Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go; keep her, for she is thy 'ife. SOLOMON,

Books are a guide in youth and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from being a burden to ourselves. JEREMY COLLIER.

The only true equalizers in the world are books; the only treasure-house open to all comers is a library. DR. LANGFORD.

If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all. FENELON.

My early and invincible love of reading, I would not exchange for the treasures of India. - GIBBON.

At this day, as much company as I have kept, and as much as I love it, I love reading better. - POPE.

When I consider what some books have done for the world, and what they are doing, how they keep up our hope, awaken new courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal life to those whose homes are hard and cold, bind together distant ages and foreign lands, create new worlds of beauty, bring down truths from heaven, I give eternal blessings for this gift. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.

Books are the friends of the friendless. - GEORGE S. HILLARD.
Who of us can tell

What he had been, had Cadmus never taught

The art that fixes into form the thought, —

Had Plato never spoken from his cell,
Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?

BULWRR

"WHEN a boy," said Horace Greeley, "I would go reading to the woodpile; reading to the garden; reading to the neighbors. My father was poor and needed my services through the day, but it was a mighty strug gle for him to get me to bed at night. I would take a pine knot, put it on the backlog, pile my books around

"Happy is the man that findeth wisdom,

And the man that getteth understanding:

For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver,

And the gain thereof, than fine gold.

She is more precious than rubies:

And all the things thou canst desire

Are not to be compared unto her."