ived seventy years will not attest this from his own life's
experience? The generous, truthful boy will be the noble, honorable
man; the modest, timid, truthful girl will be the gentle, kind, and
upright woman. Nature plants the germ, and education but cultivates the
tree. It never changes the fruit. The boy who, when dinner-time comes,
happens to have a pie, when his fellows have none, and will open his
basket before his companions, and divide with them, will carry the same
trait to the grave. His hand will open to assist the needy, and he will
seek no reward beyond the consciousness of having done right. And he
who, with the same school-boy's treasure, will steal away, and devour
it behind the school-house, and alone, will, through life, be equally
mean in all his transactions. From motives of interest, he may assume a
generosity of conduct, but the innate selfishness of his heart will, in
the manner of his dispensing favors, betray itself. Education, and the
influences of polished society, may refine the manners, but they never
soften the heart to generous emotions, where nature has refused to sow
its seed. But where her hand has been liberal in this divine
dispensation, no misfortune, no want of education or association, will
prevent their germination and fructification. Such hearts divide their
joys and their sorrows, with the fortunate and afflicted, with the same
emotional sincerity with which they lift their prayers to Heaven.

The school-room is an epitome of the world. There the same passions
influence the conduct of the child, which will prompt it in riper
years, and the natural buddings of the heart spring forth, and grow on
to maturity with the mind and the person. College life is but another
phase of this great truth, when these natural proclivities are more
manifest, because more matured. It is not the greatest mind which marks
the greatest soul, and it is not the most successful who are the
noblest and best. The shrewd, the mean, and the selfish grow rich, and
are prosperous, and are courted and preferred, because there are more
who are mean and venal in the world than there are who are generous and
good. But it is the generous and good who are the great benefactors of
mankind; and yet, if there was no selfishness in human nature, there
would be no means of doing good. Wealth is the result of labor and
economy. These are not incompatible with generosity and ennobling
manliness. The proper discrimination i