to the highest point possible for us to attain in our present stage of being, what a shame it is to make one's life only a bitterness and a curse. Alas! how many are doing that! To prevent this worse than waste of existence, to help to nobler living here, to aid in the preparation for grander work in more glorious worlds, is the purpose of this present volume. In it will be found words of wisdom from those who have attained, each in his own way and place, somewhat of success in this world.

They who now speak to you from these pages are soon to pass to the life beyond the scenes of time. Some of you must occupy their present places, m 1st do their work; must, in your turn, help others as they now seek to help you.

Listen to their counsel and kindly words of advice. It may save you much of heartache and, perchance, despair hereafter. You too would succeed. It is not natural to wish to be a wreck, to be counted as "thorns" or "chaff." So it is safe to assume that you wish to make the life God has given you a blessing to yourself and to others. It is well, then, at the beginning of your career, to remember that there is no teacher like experience, nor any lessons so impressive and so costly as hers.

Very many, indeed, will learn at no other school, and all of us have, at some time, to take more or less lessons there. Yet it is neither wise nor safe to trust wholly to what you may learn of her, for you will find that the knowledge there gained, however valuable, often comes too late to be of benefit to you in this life, and serves only to remind you of your previous folly. Be willing, therefore, to learn from others.

Example is a better, more kindly, and less expensive instructor than experience, and the many life lessons here furnished will, if rightly learned, aid you in your effort to make noble use of the talents intrusted to your keeping. Whatever your position in life is, be assured, first of all, that all honest work, whether of hand or brain, is noble. It is the worker who dignifies the task, and not the task that ennobles the worker.

Christ, at the lowly carpenter's bench, was grander far than he who swayed Cæsar's scepter. If he had then aspired to sit

on Cæsar's throne, he could not have been the Christ, for the only road from earth to heavenly glory lies through the valley of humiliation. Be not, therefore, ashamed either of your lowly surroundings, or of your humble and hard work. Are you poor and unknown? This certainly can be no barrier to your acquiring both wealth and honor. Rather, it should be an added incentive. For being now at the bottom there can be no fear of further falling, and the only direction is upward.

Unless one is low, it is impossible to ascend, and the higher one climbs, the more the glory, and the greater the strength of the climber. "Time and I against any other two," cried a heathen philosopher. You should have equal courage, for there is no stint of time in God's great universe. All the coming ages are yours. Resolve, then, to make something noble of yourself; to do something worth the doing. It will require hard work. But few persons have to struggle for success as did that world renowned missionary and explorer, Livingstone.

His parents were in such straitened circumstances that when he was but ten years of age he was put to work in a cotton factory as a "piecer," in order to eke out the family living. But the lad was hungry for knowledge, and with part of his first week's scant wages bought a small Latin grammar, and began to rise! He was required to be in the factory at work by six o'clock in the morning, and must work until eight o'clock at night, with but a brief interlude for breakfast and dinner. But undaunted he toiled on, hurrying at the close of his long day to an evening school, and then home to pore over his dictionary until midnight or later, or until, as he quaintly tells us, his mother would snatch away the candle from him in order to get him to bed.

In his brief account of his efforts to obtain an education, he says: "I never received a farthing of aid from anyone. My reading while at work was carried on by placing the book on a portion of the spinning-jenny so that I could catch sentence after sentence as I passed at my work; I thus kept up a pretty constant study, undisturbed by the roar of the machinery."

For a dozen years he thus toiled, reading, he says, "everything
I could lay my hands on, except novels."

He became proficient in the classics. He devoured all the books of science and of travel he could get. He studied practically geology and botany, roaming for miles in search of specimens. Becoming a Christian, he then resolved on being a missionary. When nineteen years of age, he was promoted to "cotton spinning," a kind of toil, he adds, that "was excessively severe on a slim, loose jointed lad; but it was well paid for, and it enabled me to support myself while attending medical and Greek classes in Glasgow in winter, as also the divinity lectures of Dr. Wardlaw, by working with my hands in summer."

The record of his life and labors as a missionary and explorer in Africa is a household tale. The story of how half the hearts of the world were moved to learn of his fate, the sending of the Stanley expedition to find him, and the opening up of Africa to civilization, as a result, form the now familiar romance of the nineteenth century. It was hard, persistent work that made David Livingstone famous. Concerning it, he said, "Looking back now on that life of toil, I cannot but feel thankful that it formed such a material part of my early education, and, were it possible, I should like to begin life over again in the same lowly style, and to pass through the same hardy training." That is the kind of spirit that makes heroes. Do not, then, shrink from your work, nor despair because of your lowly surroundings. Sterile soil, fierce storms, and rough winds develop the strong, toughened fiber of the oak.

God designed us for noble purposes, and put us in this trialworld to develop the best that is in us by giving each a work to do. Do not disappoint him and shame yourself by asking for easier tasks, but do the work now at your hand and do it well. Thus, step by step, you will be led up to nobler tasks and greater usefulness, with a name worthy of rank among the immortals.

D

Meaning of Success.

CHARLES MORTIMER GATES, M.S.,

President of the Creamery Package Manufacturing Co., Chicago.

N these days of struggle and toil, of success and failure, in the midst of competition and strife, it is well for young

I

men to pause at the threshold of their calling and ask "What is the meaning of success in life?" Yea, and far more important, indeed, is it for the man well started on life's mission, surrounded with all the temptations of business life and the immeasurable power of money and all its entangling forces, to ask frequently, "What is true success?" Shall these questions be answered according to the usual standard of the world, "Seek wealth and amass a large fortune, and you will never be lacking for friends and enjoyment," or shall they rather be answered from a higher and broader standard, which has its foundation in righteousness and its end and purpose in the well-being of man and his eternal welfare? Shall we enter and pursue life's mission for an altogether selfish purpose, which seeks to acquire all things by any means which may accomplish the end, or shall our dealings with men be tempered with justice and kindness, with some regard to what is right and fair, man with man? Shall our lives be measured altogether by the dollars we have gained or by the general good we have done in the world? Having been blessed with the good things of life, shall we appropriate them all unto self and its belittling ends, or shall we generously and wisely appropriate a portion at least to the needs and benefits of the thousands less prospered than ourselves? Shall not our lives be centered in a greater and a more far reaching end than self aggrandizement? Aye. Shall

we not live that we may bless; gain that we may give; love that we may benefit mankind?

Who is not fond of life's stories when we think of the countless numbers of them that have been told, as well as the vast numbers unworthy to be mentioned since the advent of man? All history is but a story of human life. But what of the forty or more trillions of human beings that history has never deigned to mention, and whose names and life records have long since passed from the annals of time, their memorials having perished with themselves? Yet none would say that any of these vast numbers of human beings have lived in vain, but rather to no great end or purpose. 'Tis but the few names out of all those countless millions that have lived in the memory till our time. Not less than an hundred millions of men and women have lived and died in the United States since the discovery of America, yet out of this vast number the experts who compiled that extensive and most valuable " 'Encyclopedia of American Biography" could find, after a most careful and exhaustive research, but fifteen thousand one hundred and fortytwo names among them all, and that, too, after taking in those now living who were, by inheritance or ancestral prestige, considered worthy of being so much as mentioned. Shall you and I be enrolled among the few or the many? If among the few, shall it be because of noble achievements, righteous deeds, and honorable acquirements, where the merits of our own worthiness make pre-eminence, or shall we be swallowed up in that innumerable horde of common oblivion?

'Tis a pitiful comment on human vanity and weakness that so few are found worthy to be mentioned, and that out of that number so few attain eminence through their own personal efforts, but shine from some borrowed light of inheritance. Some most noble names, indeed, are in the galaxy, names destined to glow with increasing brightness as the ages move on, names that the world will not willingly let die. But of others it can only be said that they serve as beacons to warn us, rather than as models by which we can build.