ies; cheer under straining burdens; self-control
and self-denial and temperance. These are the prime qualities;
these the fundamentals. We have heard these names before! When we
were small mother had a way of harping on them, and father joined
in emphatically, and the minister used to refer to them in church.
And this was what our first employer meant--only his way of putting
the matter was, "Look sharp, my boy!"--"Be on time, John!"--"Stick
to it!" Yes, that is just what they all meant: these _are_ the very
qualities which the mothers tried to tuck into us when they tucked
us into bed, the very qualities which the ministers pack into their
platitudes, and which the nations pack into their proverbs. And
that goes to _show_ that they are the fundamentals. Reading,
writing, and arithmetic are very handy, but these fundamentals of a
man are handier to have; worth more; worth more than Latin and
Greek and French and German and music and art-history and painting
and wax flowers and travels in Europe added together. These last
are the decorations of a man or woman: even reading and writing are
but conveniences: those other things are the _indispensables_. They
make one's sit-fast strength and one's active momentum, whatsoever
and wheresoever the lot in life be--be it wealth or poverty, city
or country, library or workshop. Those qualities make the solid
substance of one's self.

And the question I would ask of myself and you is, How do we get
them? How do they become ours? High-school and college can give
much, but these are never on their programmes. All the book
processes that we go to the schools for, and commonly call "our
education," give no more than _opportunity_ to win these
indispensables of education. How, then, do we get them? We get them
somewhat as the fields and valleys get their grace. Whence is it
that the lines of river and meadow and hill and lake and shore
conspire to-day to make the landscape beautiful? Only by long
chiselings and steady pressures. Only by ages of glacier crush and
grind, by scour of floods, by centuries of storm and sun. These
rounded the hills, and scooped the valley-curves, and mellowed the
soil for meadow-grace. There was little grace in the operation, had
we been there to watch. It was "drudgery" all over the land