not consult simply their
own individual happiness. Sooner or later all men take on a broader
burden than merely their own support. Try early in life to get the start
which the experience of others furnishes you. You are lucky that you
were born in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Men before you
have, by ambition and energy, made the affair of living easier for you.
Right here in youth is the time to begin the battle. You are now a
private.

OFFICERS ARE VERY SCARCE.

Make up your mind to have shoulder-straps early in the campaign. You
cannot afford to miss a single battle. Every opportunity which opens to
you is a city to be taken, and you are to be put in command. See that it
surrenders. No city ever properly besieged evaded final capitulation.
The chances are all in your favor. Remember, when you contemplate your
unambitious comrade, that he is likely to change his tastes as he grows
older. If he cannot give a reasonable degree of encouragement to those
tastes he will then become crabbed and sour. Wherever you see men crusty
and difficult to please, be sure they have had cities to take and
failed to capture them.

ALEXANDER SMITH,

a Scotch poet who died at a very early age, said very appropriately: "To
bring the best human qualities to anything like perfection, to fill them
with the sweet juices of courtesy and charity, prosperity, or, at all
events, a moderate amount of it, is required--just as sunshine is needed
for the ripening of peaches and strawberries." Now how are you to catch
this marvelous sunshine of prosperity? Simply, do not shut it out. Your
comrade has had the moral ague. He fears that, if the sun shine on him,
it will bring a return of his fever. When the sun shines on you, do not
miss a ray. It makes you grow.

YOUR PARTICULAR DUTIES

are soon learned. Why is it that the affairs of walking behind a counter
and actually knowing what your employer pays for his goods so soon lose
the magic there once was in them? It is because the human brain is
supple, and comprehends quickly. By the time certain problems are solved
others spring up. See that you solve them. The mind should be pacified
in its desire for new conquests.

THE SAFE RULE

as to whether or not you are fitted for new endeavors is to find to your
own true satisfaction that you can do your duties better than anyone not
in daily practice of the same kind of work. If your employer can take
hold and do a thing once a