Another of the fixed rules of conduct should be to aim high in all the purposes of life.  The great obstacle to success with many of the young, is that they adopt no standard of action for their government; but allow themselves to float along the current of time like a mere straw on the surface of the waters, liable to be veered about by every puff of wind and whirling eddy!  If the current in which they float happens to waft them into the smooth waters, and the calm sunshine of virtue and respectability, it is a matter of mere fortunate chance.  If they are drawn into the dark stream of sin, they have but little power to resist, and are soon hurried into the surging rapids, and hurled over the boiling cataract of ruin!  True, they may not utterly perish even in plunging down the cataract.  They may possibly seize hold of some jutting rock below, and by a desperate effort drag themselves from the raging waters.  But they will come forth bruised, bleeding, strangling, and half-drowned, to mourn the folly of their thoughtlessness.  How much wiser and better to have taken early precaution, and guarded in the first place against the insidious current, which compelled them to purchase wisdom at so dear a rate.

To avoid this great folly, the youthful should establish a fixed purpose for life.  They should set their mark, as to what they wish to become; and then make it the great labor of their lives to attain it.  And let that mark be a high one.  You cannot make it too elevated.  The maxim of the ancients was, that although he who aims at the sun will not hit it, yet his arrows will fly much higher than though his mark was on the earth.  A young man who should strive to be a second Washington or Jefferson, might not attain to their renown.  But he would become a much greater and better man, than though he had only aspired to be the keeper of a gambling-house, or the leader of a gang of blacklegs.  In all your purposes and plans of life, aim high!

    “Again a light boat on a streamlet is seen,
     Where the banks are o’erladen with beautiful green,
     Like a mantle of velvet spread out to the sight,
     Reflects to the gazer a bright world of light. 
     The fair bark has lost none of its beauty of yore,
     But a youth is within it,—­the fair child before;
     And the Angel is gone—­on the shore see him stand,
     As he bids him adieu with a wave of the hand. 
     Ah! a life is before thee—­a life full of care,
     Gentle Youth, and mayhap thou wilt fall in its snare. 
     Can thy bark speed thee now? without wind, without tide? 
     Without the kind Angel, thy beautiful guide? 
     Ah! no;—­then what lures thee, fair youth, to depart? 
     Must thou rush into danger from impulse of heart? 
     Lo! above in the bright arch of Heaven I see
     The vision, the aim so alluring to thee: 
     ’Tis the temple of Fame, with its pillars so fair,