remembrance of a life wasted, of powers misused, of influence perverted in the advocacy of ideas repudiated, it is true, on the threshold of eternity, but repudiated too late to counteract the evil of those wasted years.

These are but samples from the ever-unfolding book of human experience. Everywhere about us, in the churches, in the shop, the mill, the office, the trading goes on.

It goes on, too, in colleges and schools, no less than in the ordinary walks of life. Every year hundreds of young men are sent home from halls of learning, branded with a reputation sure to follow them through life. Before them have been the great possibilities for education and mental development open to the youth of America as to the youth of no other land of earth; behind them fathers and mothers willing, at any cost of personal sacrifice, to furnish the means wherewith to afford to their children privileges, the like of which they were never permitted to enjoy; about them instructors, abounding in the learning of the schools, and rich in stores of practical wisdom, ready to act as counselors and friends; all that anyone could ask, in the way of opportunity, within their grasp. Young men, working their way amid poverty, privation, and want, looked upon them, envious of their condition, angered, almost, at the contrasts presented in their respective conditions and experiences. The verdict was, "expelled." Opportunities of acquisition of knowledge, of mental discipline, of preparation for useful service, of winning fame and fortune, all counted as nothing, when laid over against the delirious pleasure of a single forbidden hour.

Opportunities lost, generally speaking, are lost forever; they come not back again.

"A thousand years a poor man watched

Before the gate of Paradise;
But while one little nap he snatched,

It oped and shut. Ah! was he wise?"

A few years ago there arose in the West a congressman, a man who flashed and flamed for a brief day athwart the

horizon of our political life; then, like a meteor, he disappeared. In an unlucky hour a letter so full of grotesque spelling that even Mrs. Partington would have blushed to own authorship thereof, found its way into print, with the congressman's name attached. The country burst into a laugh, and the man was doomed, literally laughed out of the court of public opinion. Not even his pitiful plea that some one had "mucilated" his letter could avail. The glamour was gone and, with the glamour, the ambitious politician.

Deficiencies of like character have robbed many a man of distinction which otherwise might have been his. Never stopping to think of the value of opportunities for the gaining of education; refusing to believe that they would have anything to do with manhood, too late, they would have given fortunes for the acquisitions those lost opportunities would have afforded. Yet the trading goes on. Everywhere the gambling spirit prevails.

"Trading in futures," men term those transactions where they buy and sell that which, as yet, is not, and that which, likely, may never be, but of all "tradings in futures" none are so frightful in their outcome as those in which honor, reputation, good name, respect of men, hope of success, everything, is bartered for the pleasure that simply destroys; that happiness that perishes with the using. Looking out over the wrecks of human lives, lining, in every direction, the coasts of human experience, marking the fallings of men and that which ruined. them,-how significant become the solemn, and, as some think, almost mocking words of one who, favored with opportunities such as have come to but few of any age, or clime, yet turned aside to vanity, dying at last of weariness and vexation of spirit. "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." Seize, then, the chance that comes to you.

Do as did the dying Garfield when told that there was but

one chance out of a hundred for him to live. Say with him, "I will take that chance!"

Waiting for Something to Turn Up.

Τ'

REV. ALPHEUS BAKER HERVEY, PH.D.
President of St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York.

HIS was the motto of that extraordinary man, whose interesting biography we owe to the pen of Mr. Charles Dickens, the late Wilkins Micawber. If closely pressed, we should have to admit that his career was not especially distinguished by what we call success. As a business man he does not shine forth an example to the world. It does not appear that Her Majesty ever selected him, as she did Bessemer, and Mason, and many others, for knightly honors, as a recognition of his great services to the wealth-producing activities of the nation. He was often deeply concerned in business transactions, and was justly celebrated for the number and variety of the legal papers which he signed and executed. Few in his day were more familiar with the stamped paper on which subjects of the British Crown record their contracts. His were always contracts to pay certain sums due, for value received. Though a distinguished man of affairs, his sense of meum et tuum was that obscure or defective that he considered himself to have fully discharged a debt when he had signed one of these bills. In consequence, those having the misfortune to be his creditors, taking a different view of the matter, and not finding these bills passing current like those of the Bank of England, subjected this great "financier" to endless troubles, by means of writs, and civil processes, and deputy sheriffs, and debtors' prisons, and things of that sort. Indeed, one can hardly read the story of this remarkable man, whose history so brilliantly illustrates our theme, without coming to see that it requires almost as much genius, and quite as much trouble, to manage

"to live on nothing a year," as Thackeray phrases it, as it does to earn an honest livelihood.

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Mr. Micawber is the type of a class of "dead beats" which infest every community. They are great humbugs, but they probably humbug themselves even more than anyone else. They are selfish and ignoble, and mean-spirited to the last degree. But they are also preternaturally conceited. They have such lofty opinions of their merits and abilities that they think Providence, or Fortune, or whatever rules the world, is bound to make great things turn up for them. There is a proverb, long current, that "God takes care of the lame and the lazy." I suspect it originated in the philosophy of those who are always waiting for something to turn up." Of course these people are always disappointed. They deserve to be. They come to nothing but disaster and disgrace. It would be an impeachment of the wisdom and justice of Providence to suppose it would bestow special favors on men of this kind. Things do not "turn up" in this world. They are turned up. It is the active not the passive voice in such matters. There is an endless chain of efficient, natural causes running through life. Nothing comes from nothing. Multiply even billions by a naught and a naught is the product. There is also a law of equity. Men get what they deserve. Victory is won only by strenuous, brave battle. Success is gained only by effort, by labor, by self-denial, by skill and patient long-continued struggle. "Waiting for something to turn up" is waiting for moonbeams to turn into silver, for magic and chance to take the place of natural law in the universe. It is the philosophy of the shiftless, the refuge of the lazy, the excuse of the improvident.

But perhaps my readers will ask, "Are there then no favoring circumstances and conditions in life?" "Is there no tide in the affairs of men which taken at its flood leads on to fortune?' Yes, doubtless; but only for those who work and wait, not for those who lie and wait. They are for those who are out in the midst of life's activities, "doing their level best" under all