Be in earnest, therefore.  I know I have said that before; yes, and I am going to say it again.  For if you are not going to be in earnest, quit—­get out.  Resolve to get absolutely everything there is to be had out of your college experience, and then get it. Get it, I say, for that is what you will have to do.  Nobody is going to give it to you.

The spirit with which you enter college is just as important as going to college at all.  It is more important.  For if a man has the spirit that will get for him all that a college education has to give, it will also make him triumph in a contest with the world, even if he does not get his college education.  It will only be a little harder for him, that is all.

But if a man has not that mingled will and wish for a college education flaming through his young veins that makes him capable of any sacrifice to get through college, I do not see what good a college education will do him—­no, nor any other kind of an education.  The quicker such a man is compelled to make his own living without help from any source, the better for him.

So if you mean business, but have not decided whether it is better for you to go to college or not to go to college, settle the question to-day by deciding to go to college.  Then pick your college.  That is as important a matter as choosing your occupation in life.  One college is not as good as another for you.  A score of colleges may be equally excellent in the ability of their faculties, in the perfection of their equipment.

But each has its own atmosphere and traditions; each has its personality, if you may apply such a word to an institution.  And you want to select the place where your mental roots will strike in the earth most readily, and take from the intellectual soil surrounding you the greatest possible amount of mental force and vigor.

Take plenty of time to find out which, out of a score of colleges, is the best one for you.  Study their “catalogues”; talk to men who have been to these various institutions; read every reputable article you can find about them.  Keep this up long enough, and you will become conscious of an unreasoned knowledge that such and such an institution is not the place for you to go.  Finally, write to the president or other proper officer of the colleges you are thinking of attending.

You will get some sort of an answer from each of them; but if it is only three lines, that answer will breathe something of the spirit of the institution.  Of course the great universities will answer you very formally, or perhaps not at all.  Their attitude is the impersonal one.  They say to the world, and to the youth thereof:  “Here we are.  We are perfectly prepared.  We have on hand a complete stock of education.  Take it, or leave it.  It is not of the slightest concern to us.”