You say, Ah! these were extraordinary men; I am ordinary and cannot do what they did. Certainly not. You miss the lesson: do what you can with your powers and opportunities as faithfully as they did what they could with theirs. Then perhaps you will find yourself no longer ordinary. For what made these men extraordinary? Genius? Don't you believe it. If you could collect them into one august company and bid each rise and state the secret of his success, perhaps not one would say, my genius. One would say, my patience; another, hard work; another, energy; another, perseverance; another, memory; another, common sense; another, self-reliance; another, the habit of attention; another, not wasting time; another, the capacity to take infinite pains. All the answers would be the simplest; and these are the old, old answers that have been given since the world was made and must be given while the world shall stand. Nor can anything new be said to you that has not been repeated to every generation seeking knowledge this side of the youthful priests of Egypt and the calm scholars of Greece, except this one thing, that self-education is more practicable in the United States at the present time than in any land in the past; for four reasons: books are cheaper than ever before; text-books are now made simple and easy to meet the wants of students at home; much of the knowledge taught in the universities is now put within reach of the chimney-corner student in a popular form through newspapers, weekly and monthly publications; and in every village, so widespread has education become, will be found some persons to whom the solitary, earnest toiler can apply for suggestion and guidance. These advantages the self-educated men of the past never enjoyed. What is your further necessary outfit? It is very simple: a few hours of leisure out of every twenty-four; a little money; and the determination to act as teacher to the powers of your own mind.

Yes, that is the whole truth; teach yourself. You can; if ever educated, whether in college or not, you must. For what is a college? A place where a set of men will train the powers

of your mind for you and require you to absorb knowledge? No. I was thrown with many hundreds of young men in my university; afterwards I taught hundreds of others. It is my 'firm conviction that the greatest number of those who failed. did so from this mistaken idea of a college as a place where they would be trained and be taught. But a college is mainly a place where you train yourself and teach yourself-under guidance and with certain advantages. In a gymnasium who carries on your muscular education? You. You tug, you expand your chest, you push, pull, strike, run. A teacher in a college no more trains your mind than one in a gymnasium trains your body. He gives out from day to day mental work for you to train your powers upon. You go off to your chimney corner and do this or not. Then you go back to him and he finds out what you have done; whether you have trained memory, patience, self-reliance, attention, capacity for work, and capacity to take pains. But all the teachers in the world cannot train these powers for you. They only guide, encourage, inspire, as you draw these things out of your own nature, toiling in some chimney corner of solitary effort. But if you must train them in college, can you not train them out of college? Life is the answer. Life, the world, trains every power to the highest exercise and efficiency in persons who never saw a college or had a teacher.

Here, then, perhaps, we reach your greatest difficulty; you believe you can attend to the training of your powers, but for guiding them in the pursuit of knowledge a teacher is indispensable. True. But now make your greatest discovery of the goodness and wisdom of nature, who realized that while few of the myriads of her human creatures could ever pay for a teacher, all of them needed to be taught, and so bestowed upon the human mind not only the power to learn but also the power to teach itself. She has made you to yourself both pupil and teacher, school child and school master. If you will only learn well all that your mind can teach you, your education will never lack breadth and depth and sublimity. Who taught the

first astronomer? Who the most advanced one living to-day? Who taught Gray American botany, or Audubon American ornithology, or Franklin science, or Edison invention? Who in every age and land has taught those who knew more of any subject than all others? Who taught these teachers in colleges? All have been taught by the teacher you possess the teacher within. On going to college a young man's first astounding discovery is often this: that every teacher there sets him to teaching himself. The better college student you are, the more independent you will be of every other teacher than yourself. If in college you cannot teach yourself at all, you fail and education becomes impossible.

But if you have to teach yourself in college, cannot you do this out of college? Life is the answer. Life, the world, is self-taught in a thousand cases where it is college-bred in one. Thus, whether you go to college or not, all education is essentially self-education; and in the truest, noblest sense of patient, energetic self-reliance every graduate is a chimney corner graduate.

The Power of Concentration.

Ο

CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS, A.M., F.R.S.C., F.R.S.L.
The Popular Canadian Writer, Fredericton, N. B.

BSERVE two rivers, each delivering a great volume of water to the sea. The one, after rushing with the fresh force of youth from its mountain birthplace, spreads itself out upon the low-lying lands. Lacking the wholesome restraint of firm shores, of fixed limits, its currents split, wander all abroad, and waste themselves. Losing its native energy, it soon lets drop the burden of silt or débris which it carried at first without effort; and wide shoals presently form to further choke its course. The rich plains which it should have opened up to the service of mankind are turned by its misdirected flow into pestilent marshes. Its power is either wasted or become a

curse.

With

a force perhaps less joyous and less abounding, the other stream sets out on its career. Its source may be less high, less unsullied, its tributary rivulets more laden with refuse and scourings. But when it reaches the great plain it is held within bounds. Its banks are high enough and strong enough to curb its impulse. With the vigor of its current undissipated, it now cuts itself a channel deep and clear. Its undivided force bears easily onward the burdens wherewith its start was handi

capped.

Its full and steady flood becomes the feeder of great

cities, the highway of enlightenment and progress. Its power, concentrated and controlled, is one of the benefactors of man

kind.

Let us change the figure, since no one figure can do more than present a single view of the complex attribute of human

action which we are considering. The sunlight on a winter's day may stream down upon us ever so copiously, and yet, perhaps, not raise by the fraction of a degree the temperature of the flesh exposed to it. But let these diffusive rays gather themselves into the focus of a convex glass. The result is significant. The concentrated beam of force impresses itself now with a fiery insistence. It will take no denial. In a few seconds it will scorch the flesh. It will set fire to the dry wood of the window-sill, though ice be forming all about it.

From the world of daily experience we might draw many more such parables of the power of concentration. In a word, concentration is that which makes force speedily and directly effective. Who has not seen the small man of nervous organization, acting under stress, accomplish feats of strength that baffle men of twice his muscular development? He was able, when spurred on to it, to concentrate all the force of his muscular system at the one point where it was just then needed,—the arm, or the leg, or the back, or the shoulder,-and so for the moment that one member attained an astonishing strength. The moment, perhaps, was a vital one. That man's strength, because he had the power of concentration, became great for the great emergency.

Who has not seen the boy or girl of merely average brains, but with a clearness and persistency of aim, distance competitors of thrice the original endowment? The clearness of aim gave concentration; and this concentration made the lesser volume of force the more effective.

And who has not seen the brilliant student, with capacity to learn all things, with sound principles, with ripe culture, with refinement of taste,- equipped, in a word, for the richest conquests of life and fate,—who has not seen such a one fall pitifully short of achievement, by reason of a wasteful or wavering dispersion of his gifts? His powers lacked the burning-glass of one clear purpose. They were never brought to a focus.

"Jack of all trades, master of none." This is the plain aphorism into which the world has crystallized its contempt for