But all of these do not prove that you ought not to go to college if you can.  Certainly you ought to go to college if it is possible.  But the lives of these men do prove that no matter how hard the conditions that you think surround you, success is yours in spite of them, if you are willing to pay the price of success—­if you are willing to work and wait; if you are willing to be patient, to keep sweet, to maintain fresh and strong your faith in God, your fellow men, and in yourself.

The life of any one of the men whom I have mentioned is not only an inspiration but an instruction to you who, like these men, cannot go to college.  Consider, for example, how Samuel B. Raymond established the New York Times.  He wrote his own editorials; he did his own reporting; he set his own type; he distributed his own papers.  That was the beginning.

One of the most successful merchants that I know opened a little store in the midst of large and pretentious mercantile establishments.  He bought his own goods; he was his own clerk; he swept and dusted his own storeroom, and polished his own show-cases.  He was up at five in the morning, and he worked to twelve and one at night, and then slept on the counter.  That was less than thirty years ago.  To-day he is at the head of the largest department store in one of the considerable cities of this country, and he owns his store.

This is an illustration so common that every country town, as well as London, Paris, and New York, can show examples like it.  And, mark you, most of these men were weighted down with responsibilities as great as yours can possibly be, and hindered by obstacles as numerous and difficult as those which you have confronting you.

Yet they succeeded brilliantly.  The world rewarded them as richly as any graduate of any university who went to his life’s work from the very head of his class.  For you know this, don’t you, that the world hands down success to any man who pays the price.  Very well, the price is not a college education.  The price is effectiveness, and the college is valuable only as it helps you to be effective.

Here is a true picture of our earthly work and its rewards:  Behind a counter stands the salesman, Fortune, with just but merciless scales.  On the shelves this Merchant of Destiny has both failure and success, in measure large and small.  Every man steps up to this counter and purchases what he receives and receives what he purchases.  And when he buys success he pays for it in the crimson coin of his life’s blood.

This is a sinister illustration, I know, but it is the truth, and the truth is what you are after, is it not?  You can do about what you will within the compass of your abilities; but you accomplish all your achievings with heart-beats.  This is a rule which has no exceptions, and applies with equal force to the man who goes to college and to him who cannot go.  What is that that some poet says about the successful man: