shame, these are among the penalties to those who try to win success at the expense of virtue and honor.

After all, it depends mainly on the true nature of success, and whether it lies in the direction of the short cut or not. That is not success which is not essentially worthy of achievement, and a worthy end is spoiled if it be sought by base means. Given the worthy end, and sometimes the dash wins it. It was thus that Napoleon I. added another kingdom to his empire at Marengo, and that Sheridan won a victory at Winchester. It is the quick move that often decides in business ventures. "Be an off-hand man; make your bargains at once," was the advice of the great English financier to his apprentice. But that implies genius, and even genius somebody has defined as being "infinite patience." The fable of the hare and the tortoise still has its message for this rushing age. "Prayer and provender," says the proverb, "hinder no man's journey. There is no time lost in sharpening the scythe."

Even if there be such a possibility as "cutting 'cross lots to success," it is only in exceptional cases, and doubtless in those cases somebody's care and persistence have gained what somebody else's smartness has seized. It is Goodyear in his rude laboratory enduring poverty and failure until the pasty rubber is at length hardened; it is Edison biding his time in baggage car and in printing office until that mysterious light and power glows and throbs at his command; it is Carey on his cobbler's bench nourishing the great purpose that at length carried the message of love to benighted India;-these are the cases and examples of true success.

Macaulay describes the boy Warren Hastings, then a lad of seven, lying on the banks of the stream which flowed through his ancestral estates, and vowing in his poverty and weakness to regain that lost domain. That purpose never forsook him. He pursued it with that calm but unyielding will which was one of his characteristics. In India ruling fifty million people, amid all the distracting cares of war, finance, and legislation, through all the turns of his sad and eventful career, this end was never

lost sight of, and before his long public life, so singularly checkered with good and evil, honor and shame, was ended, he had become Hastings of Daylesford, and when at length he died, it was to this home of his fathers that he was borne for burial.

Most real successes are won that way. It is the old route of patience and labor. It is lesson after lesson with the scholar, it is venture after venture with the merchant, it is trial after trial with the inventor, it is voyage after voyage, even against mutiny and tempest, with the discoverer, it is picture after picture with the painter, even failure after failure with the poet and writer, that at length wins this prize that most men are seeking. If now and then, with Byron, some one awakes to find himself suddenly famous, yet the majority of people find, with the Duke of Wellington, that "the secret of success is firmly doing your duty in that station of life to which it has pleased God to call you."

The Grandeur of Patience.

WILLIAM C. KING, Springfield, Mass.

ATIENCE is one of the grandest virtues of the finite being, and to it may be credited greater achievements and nobler results than the world has yet acknowledged. It is that peculiar quality of mind and heart which seals all complaining lips, soothes the wounded heart, and simply abides the time for the accomplishment of a purpose. To act is a noble thing, but to wait patiently exhibits a nobler and a higher power of manhood.

It is not always an easy task to wait patiently while we feel that we are approaching the object of our desire, yet seem to see it receding from us.

One of the serious barriers to thoroughness in the education of the young men and women of our land is the feeling that the highest triumph of life is to complete their education before reaching twenty.

The boy looks out upon life, and, seeing men vigorously engaged in their various pursuits and callings, he feels that the years devoted to study and preparation are largely thrown away. He resolves to hasten through, and take a short cut across the field of knowledge. Consequently he rushes blindly into the arena of life's activities but illy prepared for the great combat.

It has been stated that only about seven per cent. of business men succeed in life. No doubt this large percentage of failures is due to the impatience of youthful years. Young men do not appreciate the true value of a thorough preparation for life's work, but enter upon business or professional life

before they are sufficiently matured either in education or in years, hence they lack the stamina essential to success.

By reading the biography of some great man who won fame and honor, a young man is fired with a desire to become great and honored also, and he at once sets about to reach the goal. He does not stop to analyze the life of this great man and follow him from the cradle of poverty, through long years of hardship and struggle, years of discouragement and thwarted plans, years in which there were, by far, more cloudy days than sunshine, but he sees only the brilliant crown studded with stars of success. He ignores the element of time in reaching the goal of greatness. He sets aside the factor of life's developing hardships and forgets that true greatness is built upon a foundation laid deep, broad, and solid, requiring time and patience. The would-be great man is too impatient to master the elements of his chosen theme, but, on the principle of the greater including the less, he plunges into the very heart of his subject, and soon becomes bewildered, discouraged, and with shame and humiliation abandons his wild notion of leaping upon the platform of greatness.

Many great and useful men, it is true, have completed their college course while very young, but nature smiled upon them in a generous manner. Their peculiar aptitude for acquiring knowledge enabled them to pursue their course at a rapid pace, without impatient haste. Some pronounce a man of this class a genius, forgetting that genius consists of a special aptitude for performing great labor,-patient, persistent, incessant labor.

Nature furnishes us with the grandest example of patience in the whole realm of the universe. Her patient hand is seen on every side. From the tiny acorn she slowly rears to full stature the mighty oak of the forest.

"Through what long and weary ages has nature pounded on the granite doors of giant mountains, pleading for crumbs that fall from rocky tables, that she may bear them down to the vales, to feed the hungry guests that wait in the halls below. Through countless ages she has stood with patient

hand and sifted into river beds and ocean depths the fine alluvial morsels that she begged from miser mountains."

Patience has produced the grandest results in the achievements of man. As one writer beautifully expresses it:

"There is no shining goal of human glory too bright or too remote for patience. No height can tire its wing. Strike from the firmament of human greatness every star that has been placed there by the hand of patience, and you cover that firmament with the veil of midnight darkness. It is patience that has crushed mighty evils and wrought sublime reforms in human history; patience, that dared to stand up and meet the taunts of ignorance and bigotry; patience, that has calmly walked back into the shadow of defeat, with Thy will be done' upon its lips; patience, that has breathed the fiery smoke of torment with upturned brow."

Patience is one of the grandest representatives of the Creator. Truly has it been said:

"Patience comforts the poor and moderates the rich; she makes us humble in prosperity, cheerful in adversity, unmoved by calumny, and above reproach; she teaches us to forgive those who have injured us, and to be the first in asking the forgiveness of those whom we have injured; she delights the faithful, and invites the unbelieving; she adorns the woman and approves the man; she is beautiful in either sex and every age."