rpose;
education will not, genius will not, talent will not, industry will
not, will-power will not. The purposeless life must ever be a failure.
What good are powers, faculties, unless we can use them for a purpose?
What good would a chest of tools do a carpenter unless he could use
them? A college education, a head full of knowledge, are worth little
to the men who cannot use them to some definite end.

The man without a purpose never leaves his mark upon the world. He has
no individuality; he is absorbed in the mass, lost in the crowd, weak,
wavering, incompetent. His outlines of individuality and angles of
character have been worn off, planed down to suit the common thought
until he has, as a man, been lost in the throng of humanity.

"He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself
to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle
spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity."

What a great directness of purpose may be traced in the career of Pitt,
who lived--ay, and died--for the sake of political supremacy. From a
child, the idea was drilled into him that he must accomplish a public
career worthy of his illustrious father. Even from boyhood he bent all
his energy to this one great purpose. He went straight from college to
the House of Commons. In one year he was Chancellor of the Exchequer;
two years later he was Prime Minister of England, and reigned virtually
king for a quarter of a century. He was utterly oblivious of
everything outside his aim; insensible to the claims of love, art,
literature, living and steadily working for the sole purpose of
wielding the governing power of the nation. His whole soul was
absorbed in the overmastering passion for political power.

"Consider, my lord," said Rowland Hill to the Prime Minister of
England, "that a letter to Ireland and the answer back would cost
thousands upon thousands of my affectionate countrymen more than a
fifth of their week's wages. If you shut the post office to them,
which you do now, you shut out warm hearts and generous affections from
home, kindred, and friends." The lad learned that it cost to carry a
letter from London to Edinburgh, four hundred and four miles, one
eighteenth of a cent, while the government charged for a simple folded
sheet of paper twenty-eight cents, and twice as much if there was the
smallest inclosure. Against the opposition and contempt of the
post-of