To start in life with comparatively small means seems so necessary as a stimulus to work," said Samuel Smiles, "that it may almost be set down as the secret of success."

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Look around you on the world's most successful men and see if it is not true, and then strive at the great possibilities before you It is not that which is done for a young man that is most valuable to him and others, but that which he is led to do for himself." Aim at the eternities to come and develop the very best of yourself for the nobler work and being that there await us.

Practice Secures Perfection.

I

REV. GEORGE R. HEWITT, B.D.

T is a truism that forms the title of this chapter, but it is none the less important on that account. There is only

It

one way to learn how to do a thing, and that is by doing it. No art, no pursuit requiring skill, is mastered at once. must be wrestled with long and patiently before it gives up its secret.

A man can learn how to saw wood in about fifteen minutes, and can then earn a dollar a day at that business the rest of his life. It is a useful occupation, but demands neither skill nor long training for its successful prosecution. Muscle with a moderate degree of intelligence is all that is necessary.

It is very different with pursuits demanding dexterity, skill, and brains. Years are required to gain the mastery over them. "How long did it take you to prepare that sermon?" asked some one of Dr. Lyman Beecher. "Forty years," was his prompt reply. Giardini, when asked how long it would take to learn the violin, replied, "Twelve hours a day for twenty years." It would be very pleasant if we could learn to play the violin or piano by inspiration. But the great musicians did not learn in that way. Incessant practice was the price they paid for their proficiency. Not by sudden inspiration but by painstaking cultivation are dexterity, mastership, and facile power of any kind acquired. Nothing is done easily, not even walking or talking, that was not done with difficulty at first. Practice in any line of action brings to our aid the law of habit, a law which reigns in the muscular and mental no less than in the moral realms of action.

Do anything a sufficient number of times, and you acquire facility in doing it. Every action tends to repeat itself; repeated action begets habit, and habit is second nature. All the powers and possibilities within us lie subject to this law of habit. Practice puts the law in operation, evokes latent possibilities, and calls into action powers which would otherwise have lain ingloriously dormant.

A child has all the organs of speech that the consummate orator has, but he has not acquired the power of using them. That power was gained by practice. Gladstone was once a prattling, stammering boy, but by practice his vocal organs became flexible, and adapted to all the intricacies of expression, until at length listening assemblies sat charmed by the music of his resounding periods.

Listen to a great pianist like Paderewski, whose touch is marvelous, whose fingers glide over the keys as if instinct with life, and it seems as though it must always have been easy for him to play; but on inquiry you learn that it was by practice, incessant and severe, from early years to manhood, that he acquired that exquisite skill.

"Those who are resolved to excel," said Sir Joshua Reynolds, "must go to their work willing or unwilling, morning, noon, and night; they will find it no play, but very hard labor." Some one has said that no great work is ever done in a hurry. With equal truth it may be said that the power to produce a great work is never acquired in a hurry. No one ever wrote an immortal poem, painted a great picture, or delivered a famous oration without serving his apprenticeship, and doing what we may call the drudgery of his art. It may have been in secret that the drudgery was done, but done it had to be. Vasari relates in his "Lives of the Painters," that Giotto could with his hand draw a perfect circle, but he does not tell us how many imperfect ones he drew before he made a perfect one. Even Titian and Raphael had to begin by drawing straight lines; Beethoven and Mozart by picking out the notes one by one; and Shakespeare himself had to learn the alphabet before he wrote

Hamlet and King Lear. Little by little these things are learned. "There is no such thing," said Daniel Webster, "as extemporaneous acquisition." Perfection is not gained, any more than heaven, "at a single bound." "We build the ladder by which we rise."

Charles J. Fox was a gifted man, but his gifts had to be gradually developed by practice. He made it a point to speak in Parliament every night for his own improvement. Henry Clay's advice to young lawyers was not to let a day pass without exercising their powers. His own early practice of the art of speaking is well known. At the age of twenty-seven he began and for years he continued the practice of daily reading and speaking upon the contents of some historical or scientific book. These offhand efforts, he says, were sometimes made in a cornfield, and not unfrequently in a barn with only horses and oxen for his auditors. Not sudden inspiration or illumination while speaking, but careful cultivation, he gives as the secret of his oratorical power.

Be not discouraged if progress seems slow. Time and toil will work wonders. Practice is the prelude to the song of victory. Do your best every time. Remember Beethoven's maxim, "The barriers are not erected which say to aspiring talents and industry, thus far and no farther.""