I MENTION THESE TRICKS

not because they are good for anything practical, but to get you to take up figures and be quick with them.  Get yourself up a multiplication table running to 50 times 50—­there’s something practical.  The man quick and accurate at figures is always esteemed.

OUR LANGUAGE

is a vast record of the changes in pronunciation which have been brought about by affected people as well as careless and ignorant people. “’Tis true ’tis pity, and pity ’tis ’tis true.”  But you cannot change it by spelling “balance” with two ls, or “sure” with an h.  Be accurate in your spelling.  Restrict yourself to such words as you can spell, and you will soon improve if you are guilty of such errors.  In conclusion, if you go fishing and catch three perch and one black bass, say that you caught those fish, and not that you caught three black bass and one perch.  Right there is where you can form habits that will shine out in your face as you grow to the full dignity of manhood.  You see I lay special stress on habit.  The Duke of Wellington said that habit was ten times nature.  Horace Mann said

“HABIT IS A CABLE.

We weave a thread of it every day, and at last we cannot break it.”  Dr. Locke said with a wonderful knowledge of life:  “Habit works more constantly and with greater facility than reason; which, when we have most need of it, is seldom fairly consulted, and more rarely obeyed.”  Thus, you see, when a man is spoken of as a person “of good habits,” it means something more than is usually conceived.  It means he is under chains which he cannot break—­and, in reality, that he could not be a bad man without suffering and discomfort.

SUCCESS.

     Nothing succeeds so well as success.—­Talleyrand.

[Illustration T] The man Talleyrand, who made the above mocking assertion, was one of the closest observers of human nature who have ever lived.  And yet what he said in a spirit of uncommon hatred of his fellow-beings is really another way of saying the exact truth—­that success comes only after so many trials and disappointments that the world, considering it a safe rule, admires the result, and feels that the reflected credit for a great result belongs to him upon whom it falls.  Beside you toils a young man of your own age.  He does not seem to care to rise.  He dislikes the few duties of the present, and would be inclined to shrink from further responsibilities.  It may be that he is the happier as compared with you, but men must not consult simply their own individual happiness.  Sooner or later all men take on a broader burden than merely their own support.  Try early in life to get the start which the experience of others furnishes you.  You are lucky that you were born in the latter half of the nineteenth century.  Men before you have, by ambition and energy, made the affair of living easier for you.  Right here in youth is the time to begin the battle.  You are now a private.