bility to
express the power within one, to give out what one knows, that measures
efficiency and achievement. Pent-up knowledge is useless.

People who feel their lack of education, and who can afford the outlay,
can make wonderful strides in a year by putting themselves under good
tutors, who will direct their reading and study along different lines.

The danger of trying to educate oneself lies in desultory,
disconnected, aimless studying which does not give anything like the
benefit to be derived from the pursuit of a definite program for
self-improvement. A person who wishes to educate himself at home
should get some competent, well-trained person to lay out a plan for
him, which can only be effectively done when the adviser knows the
vocation, the tastes, and the needs of the would-be student. Anyone
who aspires to an education, whether in country or city, can find
someone to at least guide his studies; some teacher, clergyman, lawyer,
or other educated person in the community to help him.

There is one special advantage in self-education,--you can adapt your
studies to your own particular needs better than you could in school or
college. Everyone who reaches middle life without an education should
first read and study along the line of his own vocation, and then
broaden himself as much as possible by reading on other lines.

One can take up, alone, many studies, such as history, English
literature, rhetoric, drawing, mathematics, and can also acquire by
oneself, almost as effectively as with a teacher, a reading knowledge
of foreign languages.

The daily storing up of valuable information for use later in life, the
reading of books that will inspire and stimulate to greater endeavor,
the constant effort to try to improve oneself and one's condition in
the world, are worth far more than a bank account to a youth.

How many girls there are in this country who feel crippled by the fact
that they have not been able to go to college. And yet they have the
time and the material close at hand for obtaining a splendid education,
but they waste their talents and opportunities in frivolous amusements
and things which do not count in forceful character-building.

It is not such a very great undertaking to get all the essentials of a
college course at home, or at least a fair substitute for it. Every
hour in which one focuses his mind vigorously upon his studies at home
may be as beneficial as the same time spent