d long enough. One talent with a will behind
it will accomplish more than ten without it, as a thimbleful of powder
in a rifle, the bore of whose barrel will give it direction, will do
greater execution than a carload burned in the open air.

"THE WILLS, THE WON'TS, AND THE CAN'TS."

"There are three kinds of people in the world," says a recent writer,
"the wills, the won'ts, and the can'ts. The first accomplish everything;
the second oppose everything; the third fail in everything."

The shores of fortune, as Foster says, are covered with the stranded
wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith,
and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute but
less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port.

Were I called upon to express in a word the secret of so many failures
among those who started out with high hopes, I should say they lacked
will-power. They could not half will: and what is a man without a will?
He is like an engine without steam. Genius unexecuted is no more genius
than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks.

Will has been called the spinal column of personality. "The will in its
relation to life," says an English writer, "may be compared at once to
the rudder and to the steam engine of a vessel, on the confined and
related action of which it depends entirely for the direction of its
course and the vigor of its movement."

Strength of will is the test of a young man's possibilities. Can he will
strong enough, and hold whatever he undertakes with an iron grip? It is
the iron grip that takes and holds. What chance is there in this
crowding, pushing, selfish, greedy world, where everything is pusher or
pushed, for a young man with no will, no grip on life? The man who would
forge to the front in this competitive age must be a man of prompt and
determined decision.

A TAILOR'S NEEDLE.

It is in one of Ben Jonson's old plays: "When I once take the humor of a
thing, I am like your tailor's needle--I go through with it."

This is not different from Richelieu, who said: "When I have once taken
a resolution, I go straight to my aim; I overthrow all, I cut down all."

And in business affairs the counsel of Rothschild is to the same effect:
"Do without fail that which you determine to do."

Gladstone's children were taught to accomplish _to the end_ whatever
they might begin, no matter how insignificant the undertaking might be.

WHAT IS WORSE THA