I have no quarrel with that attitude.  These institutions are going on the assumption that you already have character and purpose; that you already know what you are about.  They are ready for you if you are ready for them.  And if you are not ready for them, if you are only a rich person or a mere stroller along the highways of life, what is that to them?  Why should it be anything to them?  Why should it be anything to anybody?  The world is busy, young man; you have got to make yourself worth while if it pays any attention to you.

Making sure always that the college of your choice is well equipped, select the one where you will feel the most at home.  Other things being equal, go where there are the most men in whose blood burns the fire which is racing through your veins.  Go to the college in whose atmosphere you will find most of the ozone of earnestness.  It may well be that you will find this thing in one of the smaller colleges, of which there are so many and such excellent ones scattered all over the Nation.

Certainly these little colleges have this advantage:  their students are usually very poor boys, who have to struggle and deny themselves to go to college at all—­young men whose determination to do their part in the world is so great that hunger is a small price to pay for that preparation which they think a college education gives them; men whose resolve to “make something of themselves,” as the common saying goes, is so irresistible that they simply cannot endure to stay away from college.

Such men have hard muscles, made strong and tense by youthful toil; great lungs, expanded by plow in field or ax in forest; nerves of steel, tempered by days of labor in open air and nights of dreamless slumber, which these hypnotics of Nature always induce.  These men have strong, firm mouths; clear, honest eyes, that look you straight and fair; and a mental and moral constitution which fit these physical manifestations of it.

And these are just the kind of men among whom you ought to spend your college life, if you are one of the same kind—­and perhaps much more if you are not.

Fellows like these believe in the honor of men, the virtue of women, the sacredness of home, and that the American people have a mission in the world marked out for them by the Ruler of the Universe—­though this is not a fair distinction since all Americans believe in these high, sweet things of life and destiny.  It is a faith common to all Americans and monopolized by no class.

But you know what kind of a man you are, and therefore you will find out, if you search with care, what college is the best for you.  I insist upon the importance of this selection.  It is a real, practical problem.  You will never have a more important task set you in class-room, or even throughout your entire life, than to select the college which is going to do you the most good.  So go about it with all the care that you would plan a campaign if you were a general in the field, or conduct an experiment if you were a scientist in the laboratory.