ut of the University, and go into
studies of your own, you will find it very important that you have
selected a field, a province in which you can study and work.

The most unhappy of all men is the man that cannot tell what he is
going to do, that has got no work cut out for him in the world, and
does not go into it. For work is the grand cure of all the maladies
and miseries that ever beset mankind--honest work, which you intend
getting done. If you are in a strait, a very good indication as to
choice--perhaps the best you could get--is a book you have a great
curiosity about. You are then in the readiest and best of all possible
conditions to improve by that book. It is analogous to what doctors
tell us about the physical health and appetites of the patient. You
must learn to distinguish between false appetite and real. There is
such a thing as a false appetite, which will lead a man into vagaries
with regard to diet, will tempt him to eat spicy things which he
should not eat at all, and would not but that it is toothsome, and for
the moment in baseness of mind. A man ought to inquire and find
out what he really and truly has an appetite for--what suits his
constitution; and that, doctors tell him, is the very thing he ought
to have in general. And so with books. As applicable to almost all
of you, I will say that it is highly expedient to go into history--to
inquire into what has passed before you in the families of men. The
history of the Romans and Greeks will first of all concern you; and
you will find that all the knowledge you have got will be extremely
applicable to elucidate that. There you have the most remarkable race
of men in the world set before you, to say nothing of the languages,
which your professors can better explain, and which, I believe, are
admitted to be the most perfect orders of speech we have yet found
to exist among men. And you will find, if you read well, a pair of
extremely remarkable nations shining in the records left by themselves
as a kind of pillar to light up life in the darkness of the past
ages; and it will be well worth your while if you can get into the
understanding of what these people were and what they did. You will
find a great deal of hearsay, as I have found, that does not touch on
the matter; but perhaps some of you will get to see a Roman face to
face; you will know in some measure how they contrived to exist, and
to perform these feats in the world; I believe, also, y