hat former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast:
This is the happy warrior; this is he
That every man in arms should wish to be.

THE REWARD.

+Courage universally honored.+--There is something in this strong,
steady power of self-assertion that compels the admiration of everyone
who beholds it. When we see a man standing squarely on his own feet;
speaking plainly the thoughts that are in his mind; doing fearlessly
what he believes to be right; or no matter how widely we may differ from
his views, disapprove his deeds, we cannot withhold our honor from the
man himself. No man was ever held in veneration by his countrymen; no
man ever handed down to history an undying fame, who did not have the
courage to speak and act his real thought and purpose in defiance of the
revilings and persecutions of his fellows.

THE TEMPTATION.

+To take one's fortune into his own hands and work out, in spite of
opposition and misfortune, a satisfactory career tasks strength and
resolution to the utmost.+--It is so much more easy to give over the
determination of our fate to some outside power that the abject
surrender to fortune is a serious temptation. Air-castles and
day-dreams, and idle waiting for something to turn up, are the feeble
forms of this temptation. The impulse to run away from danger, and the
impulse to plunge recklessly into risks, are the two forms of temptation
which lead to the more pronounced and prevalent vices.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

+Yielding to outward pressure, contrary to our own conviction of what is
true and right, is moral cowardice.+--In early times the coward was the
man who turned his back in battle. To-day the coward is the man who does
differently when people are looking at him from what he would do if he
were alone; the man who speaks what he thinks people want to hear,
instead of what he knows to be true; the man who apes other people for
fear they will think him odd if he acts like himself; the man who tries
so hard to suit everybody that he has no mind of his own; the man who
thinks how things will look, instead of thinking how things really are.
Whenever we take the determination of our course of conduct ultimately
from any other source than our own firm conviction of what is right and
true, then we play the coward. We do in the peaceful conditions of
modern life just what we despise a soldier for doing on th