brated poet, Robert Burns, learned little more than how to read English at the humble village school he attended. Some of our greatest American authors have had no collegiate training. Among these are William Dean Howells, George William Curtis, Bret Harte, and Samuel L. Clemens. What is still more worthy of note, is this, that the real education of a man, that which fits him for his special vocation in life, must be acquired by himself, or it cannot be taught at all. Every year college-bred men are quitting the halls of Harvard, Yale, and other excellent colleges, with parchment attestations to their abundant scholarship, and meanwhile men who never entered a college are fully as often found in the highest and most honorable stations of life. Very often the practical man has secured a good start in life when the college graduate is only ready to begin.

But too much should not be attempted by the aspirant for success. We seem to be, to a certain extent, at the mercy of circumstances. If Cromwell had lived in the nineteenth century, he would have died a farmer. Columbus would have been, in all probability, a studious mathematician, rather than a bold mariner. Napoleon, if he lived in the United States at the present time, would, perhaps, be considered as one among hundreds of our able military men. Sir Walter Scott in an earlier age would have been well content to have been a leader in the nameless raids and forays of the Scottish borders. If the whole of the mighty dead were living in our day, surrounded by the circumstances that environ us, how different would the whole course of existence of each have been. We must all be content with achieving a reasonable success, each in his vocation. Those who would succeed should bear in mind the lines of Longfellow:

"The heights by great men reached and kept,
Were not attained by sudden flight,

But they while their companions slept,

Were toiling upward in the night."

Longfellow thought so highly of the "Psalm of Life,” that he had it framed, and hung on the walls of his room, where he

could see it every day. Although often repeated, the reader would be profited by recalling the following verses to memory as often as their author did :—

"In the world's great field of battle,

In the bivouac of life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle,

Be a hero in the strife.

"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

"Footprints that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
Some forlorn ànd helpless brother,
Seeing, may take heart again.

"Let us then be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor, and to wait."

The lives of our most illustrious Americans is a speaking illustration of what may be done by our young men, although many of them may have no advantages to begin with. For a man with courage to be thrown upon his own resources, is to be thrown squarely into the lap of fortune.

The pioneers of no nation upon the earth started with so few advantages, as did the wise and good men of the Revolution, and yet see what they accomplished. We, who have inherited this magnificent country, must follow closely in their footsteps, each according to his means and ability. Unfortunately, the time will come, when the men of influence and power, who fill our highest stations, will be removed by death to a sphere of higher usefulness (or at least some of them will be removed to a sphere of higher usefulness), and then the presidents of the United States, the governors of states, the United States senators, judges of the various courts, the most responsible financial positions, as well as those desirable in theology, medi

cine and law, will be necessarily filled from the ranks of the young men of the present generation.

Who will be ready when the time for promotion arrives? Few men know their own strength. Few know the almost infinite capabilities of the human mind. There is room enough for all: every man in his chosen avocation or profession.

Getting the right pursuit is often difficult. While a young man should not be too fickle, he should, if he feels an imperative call from his own judgment, abandon his old profession or occupation, and take one more congenial, or which is more remunerative, or where there is less competition. It is said that P. T. Barnum had tried fourteen different occupations before he found out what nature had best fitted him for a showman.

If many of our young men do not succeed at once, they become disheartened. If a young lawyer, preacher, teacher or merchant does not succeed, people say he is ruined. Nonsense. His bitter experience should only fit him for something better than he has sought. Confucius knew better. He said: "Our greatest glory consists, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." The stupidity of the molders of public opinion, sometimes cause temporary failures. A critical literary Solomon of Milton's time, said of his "Paradise Lost," when it was published: "The blind schoolmaster has written a tedious poem on 'The Fall of Man,' and unless length has merit it has none." When Rufus Choate first opened an office, a number of fat, double-chinned, elderly lawyers predicted his speedy and certain failure, on account of the brilliancy of his speeches, the energy of his delivery, and his self-assertive manner, but he lived to see the day when he was head and shoulders above any of them. One of the finest classics in the English language would have been lost to the world if John Bunyan had listened to some of his friends, who advised him not to publish his "Pilgrim's Progress."

Young men wish to succeed, but they do not always think of the means by which success may be attained. They do not always like to climb the difficult steps by which round of the ladder is to be reached.

the topmost

PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE

Making the First Thousand Dollars

By PERRITON MAXWELL

[Perriton Maxwell, newspaper man and editor, was born in New York City in 1867. He was trained as a journalist on the New York "Sun," having later editorial connection with the New York “World,” "The Journal" and the "Recorder." For three years he was connected with the staff of the "Cosmopolitan Magazine," was special contributor to the "Saturday Evening Post" for one year, and since May 1900 has been managing editor of "The Metropolitan Magazine." He is an art critic and author of two volumes on art: “. American Art and Artists," and "Masterpieces of Art and Nature."]

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HE accumulation of wealth as a commendable means of self-education is a proposition that could be advanced by but one kind of man-the daring, thinking, successful kind; and men who dare and think and succeed are rare.

It requires courage to declare that the race for dollars, in which we are all entered, makes only for the intellectual good of mankind. There is a heretical smack about it which we at first resent and then think about. Popular belief is dead against the theory, and yet-when the theorist is twenty-five times a millionaire, a man of culture and refinement, and shows a disposition to help others as well as himself, it is not profitable nor wise nor polite to ignore him. The theorist in this case is Darius Ogden Mills, financier and philanthropist, and the educational value of money-getting was never better demonstrated to him than in the painfully slow gathering of his first $1,000.

D. O. MILLS ON SAVING

"To know men and read their motives is to have the Midas touch," says he. "A boy cannot be expected to have the accomplishments which come only after a long pursuit of

wealth. This is what I mean by the educational advantages of money-seeking. The planning, this way and that, to make a profit, the exercise of foresight, spurring the imagination and the reasoning faculties, the constant daily rubbing of wit against wit, always remaining mentally receptive, self-controlled and alert-these are the factors of self-education, the text-books, as it were, of the great lesson of success."

That Darius O. Mills is one of the wealthiest men of the land is due to his early determination to make the most of the raw material given him by nature. Born in North Salem, Westchester County, New York, seventy-four years ago, he was thrown upon his own resources at the age of sixteen. He was confronted with the difficult problem of how to wrest a livelihood from an indifferent world. He was about to enter the primary class of the great school of monetary education. With the usual hardihood of youth, he dared starvation in New York, and won himself a trusted clerkship in a day. A fortnight later the first dollar of his first $1,000 was laid aside in a bureau drawer.

Just six short years after he arrived in New York Mr. Mills had saved his first $1,000. Nor had he lived meanly in these years. His salary as a clerk was small, but his tastes were simple; he had cultivated no expensive habits, but he had denied himself no rational pleasure. There was a lively thrill of joy in the process of upbuilding his pile of dollars.

No definite idea as to what should be done with his increasing store of wealth had come to the young accumulator. His ambition did not go beyond the thousand-dollar mark; that was the happy goal upon which his eye was fixed.

The young clerk's hoarding had grown large enough, he thought, to place at interest in a bank. He had picked out the institution where his $990 already saved should earn for itself a merry four per cent. Life had a rosy tinge. The money was kept securely locked in a big, old-fashioned "bureau." The morning of the day young Mills intended to deposit his savings in the bank he had carefully counted his roll of bills to make sure they were all there. Then he left his room and went to his office.