I repeat the question, and multiply the forms in which I put it.  It is so pressingly important.  It concerns the most abundant and valuable material with which free institutions work—­the neglected man, he whom fortune overlooks.  It is a strange weakness of human nature that makes everybody interested in the man at the top, and nobody interested in the man at the bottom.  Yet it is the man at the bottom upon whom our Republican institutions are established.  It is the man at the bottom whom Science tells us will, by the irresistible processes of nature, produce the highest types after a while.

The young Bonaparte proved himself a very wizard of human nature when he exclaimed:  “Every soldier of France carries a marshal’s baton in his knapsack.”  And did not the Master, with a wisdom wholly divine, choose as the seed-bearers of our faith throughout the world the neglected men?  Only one of the apostles was what we would term to-day a “college man”—­St. Luke, the physician.  What said the Teacher, “The stone which was rejected to the builder, has become the chief of the corner.”

Yes—­the neglected man is the important man.  We do not think so day by day, we idle observers of our Vanity Fair, we curbstone watchers of the street parade.  We think it is the conspicuous man who counts.  Our attention is mostly for him who wears the epaulettes of prominence and favorable condition.  Therefore most articles, papers, and volumes on young men consider only that lucky favorite-of-fortune-for-the-hour, the college man.

But this paper is addressed to the neglected man.  I would have speech with those young men with stout heart, true intention, and good ability, who labor outside those college walls to which they look with longing, but may not enter.

“Every soldier of France carries a marshal’s baton in his knapsack.”  Ah, yes!  Very well.  But what was a soldier of France in Napoleon’s time to a young American to-day?  If Joubert, from an ignorant private who could not write his name, became one of the greatest generals of the world’s greatest commander, what may you not become!  Joubert did it by deserving.  Use the same method, you.  There is no magic but merit.

First, then, do not let the conditions that keep you out of college discourage you.  If such a little thing as that depresses you, it is proof that you are not the character who would have succeeded if you had a lifetime of college education.  If you are discouraged because you cannot go to college, what will happen to you when life hereafter presents to you much harder situations?  Remember that every strong man who prevails in the merciless contest with events, faces conditions which to weaker men seem inaccessible—­are inaccessible.

But it is the scaling of these heights, or the tunneling through them, or the blasting of them out of their way and out of existence, which makes these strong men strong.  It is the overcoming of these obstacles day after day and year after year, as long as life lasts, which gives these mighty ones much of their power.