t; but by men who to pure religion add the best intellectual
culture. The American youth must learn patience; he must acquire that
serene confidence in the power of labor, which makes workers willing to
wait. He must not, like a foolish child, rush forward to pluck the fruit
before it is ripe, lest this be his epitaph: The promise of his early
life was great, his performance insignificant.

Do not our young men lack noble ambition? Are they not satisfied with
low aims? To be a legislator; to be a governor; to be talked about; to
live in a marble house,--seems to them a thing to be desired. Unhappy
youths from whom the power and goodness of life are hidden, who,
standing in the presence of the unseen, infinite world of truth and
beauty, can only dream some aldermanic nightmare. They thrust themselves
into the noisy crowd, and are thrown into contact with disenchanting
experience at a time of life when the mind and heart should draw
nourishment and wisdom from communion with God and with great thoughts.
Amid the universal clatter of tongues, and in the overflowing ceaseless
stream of newspaper gossip, the soul is bewildered and stifled. In a
blatant land, the young should learn to be silent. The noblest minds are
fashioned in secrecy, through long travail like,--

"Wines that, Heaven knows where,
Have sucked the fire of some forgotten sun
And kept it thro' a hundred years of gloom
Yet glowing in a heart of ruby."

Is it not worth the labor and expectation of a life-time to be able to
do, even once, the right thing excellently well? The eager passion for
display, the desire to speak and act in the eyes of the world, is
boyish. Will is concentration, and a great purpose works in secrecy. Oh,
the goodness and the seriousness of life, the illimitable reach of
achievement, which it opens to the young who have a great heart and
noble aims! With them is God's almighty power and love, and his very
presence is hidden from them by a film only. From this little islet they
look out upon infinite worlds; heaven bends over them, and earth bears
them up as though it would have them fly. How is it possible to remain
inferior when we believe in God and know that this age is the right
moment for all high and holy work? The yearning for guidance has never
been so great. We have reached heights where the brain swims, and
thoughts are confused, and it is held to be questionable whether we are
to turn backward or to move