Webster proposed to answer him next morning. His friends protested that the time for preparation was too short. Next morning Webster delivered the greatest speech in American history. He had prepared for it all his life. "There is no such thing as extemporaneous acquisition," he once said. This opportunity did not make Daniel Webster; he had made himself, and responded naturally to the opportunity.

These examples from political and mi.itary life can be paralleled in every calling every day. Every obituary of scholar or millionaire tells the same story, that men are selfmade if ever made. Francis Parkman, half blind, was America's greatest historian in spite of everything, because he made himself such.

It is the greatest glory of America that it is the land of selfmade men. Here all is in free movement, and every one finds. his own level. Fathers and grandfathers cannot long hold one up, or keep him down. Personal value here is a coin of one's own minting, one is taken at the worth he has put into himself.

This does not mean that every boy can make anything of himself. Natural talent and opportunities for using it are to be considered. Talents differ, and so do opportunities. What is meant is that upon one's self depends the use made of talents and opportunities. The finest talent can be wasted, as John Randolph wasted his by drink, or crowning opportunities thrown away, as Aaron Burr threw his away. If opportunities are earlier neglected, fine talents are never revealed, the world is poorer, the man is a failure.

This failure to make the most of himself may be, in one case, the failure to be a first-class carpenter, a master workman; in another, to be a thrifty, prosperous farmer; of still a third, to be a studious, growing doctor or lawyer. It is all relative to the start and surroundings. This does not condemn anyone to anything beforehand. Poverty and lack of friends did not condemn Lincoln and Garfield to ignorance and obscurity. In the United States, wealth and power are in the hands of men who

have won for themselves. This is admitted, but it is often forgotten that the same rule is true all the way through society,as true of the good blacksmith as of the railroad magnate. The man who, like Adam Bede, always drives a nail straight, and planes a board true, whom men always employ at good wages, is equally the maker of his own fortunes.

It is mostly a moral matter, an affair of character in its widest sense. This character building is delicate work. One has a dozen chances to spoil it in the making, every day and for three hundred and sixty-five days in the year; perhaps for seventy years, as in Von Moltke's case.

This one may

It is often a small thing that turns the scale. It may be that the favor of superiors or the public is lost by a hasty temper or a sour spirit; things within one's own control. Others train themselves to self-control and kindness, and win. drink his first glass, and die a drunkard, or at best squander money that should be saved to noble uses. Another is an idler and wastes his time, with the result that he is ignorant when it is essential for him to know, or without resources when fronted with starvation or sickness. Another is a spendthrift and never gets ahead, however hard he works. Another yields to some weakness or passion, and finds himself heavily handicapped for life.

It is fundamentally true that one gets a better position, in the long run, only by filling well his present one. Fine qualities are perhaps better known to observers than to their possessors. The banker or the merchant notes them in subordinates; they are welcomed in the laborer; a doctor or a lawyer is employed because of them. Each one is his own best recommendation for promotion.

One cannot

Advancement usually comes unexpectedly. prepare for it as if it were in the calendar. It is like the coming of the kingdom of heaven. The young officer, Von Moltke, mastered Russian as his fifth modern language, thinking it might be sometime useful, as it was. He perfected himself in every accomplishment and so was always qualified. It is the

midnight oil that makes the great scholar. The pebbles in his mouth made Demosthenes, and the "well-stocked pigeon holes" made Daniel Webster.

All this means that one takes out of life only what he puts into it. If anything fine and noble is to be made of life, one must do it himself.

Personal Purity.

REV. EDWARD EVERETT HALE, D.D., Boston, Mass.

HOMAS ALVA EDISON was once asked why he was a

total abstainer. He said, "I thought I had a better use

for my head." The answer is worth remembering by any young fellow who means to use his brains. A wonderful battery they make. Every morning they take up their work, and start us on our daily pleasure or our daily duty, if,—

If we have not undertaken to impose on nature's plan for them.

If we have not tried this stimulus or that stimulus, not in the plan for which they were made.

The young man who means to do the best possible work his body and mind can do, keeps his body and mind as pure, as clean from outside filth, as Edison keeps his brain.

This is what is meant when we are told to keep ourselves as pure as little children are.

The readers of this book are so well up to the lessons of this time that they know that the men who are trained for a football match, or a running match, or a boxing match, have to keep their bodies from any stimulus but that which is given by food prepared in the simplest way, so as to suit the most simple appetite.

It is not simply that a man's body must be in good order itself. What is needed is that a man shall be ready and able to govern his body. He shall say "Go," and his body shall go. He shall say "Go faster," and his body shall go faster. His will, his power to govern his machinery, depends on his keeping himself pure.

Three hundred years ago, a certain set of men and women in England earned for themselves the name of Puritans. That name was given them because they kept their bodies pure. Those men and women did this because the Saviour of men and all his apostles commanded them to do so. The New Testament insists on personal purity as the beginning of all training and all knowledge. "The wisdom from above is first pure,” it says. And such men as Paul and Peter and the rest, who changed the world, insisted on personal purity. They meant that a man's body should be so pure as to be a fit temple of God. The Puritans of England believed in such instructions, and they kept their bodies pure. In his intercourse with women, in his use of stimulants, a Puritan gentleman earned his name by his chastity and his temperance.

The Cavaliers, the men at court, ridiculed this obedience to divine law. What followed on this ridicule? This followed: that, when the questions of English liberty were submitted to the decision of battle, when the fine gentlemen of the court found themselves in array against the farmers of Lincolnshire, led by Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan troopers, who kept their bodies pure, rode over the gay gentlemen who did not keep their bodies pure.

What happened on our side of the water was that the handful of Puritan settlers in Plymouth and in the Bay, who kept their bodies pure, were more than a match for the men of Massasoit and Philip, who did not keep their bodies pure. They could outmarch them, could outwatch them, could outfight them. They could rule their bodies. They could be firm to a purpose. They had at command such strength as had been given to them.

The young men who read this book probably know better than I do what are the temptations which now offer themselves in the life of an American boy. They are different in different places. I know that, not long ago, I was speaking on the need of immediate act if one would carry out a good resolution. I was in the largest theater in Boston. I looked up at the third gallery, which was crowded with several hundred boys and