ns; each has its
personality, if you may apply such a word to an institution. And you
want to select the place where your mental roots will strike in the
earth most readily, and take from the intellectual soil surrounding
you the greatest possible amount of mental force and vigor.

Take plenty of time to find out which, out of a score of colleges, is
the best one for you. Study their "catalogues"; talk to men who have
been to these various institutions; read every reputable article you
can find about them. Keep this up long enough, and you will become
conscious of an unreasoned knowledge that such and such an institution
is not the place for _you_ to go. Finally, write to the president or
other proper officer of the colleges you are thinking of attending.

You will get some sort of an answer from each of them; but if it is
only three lines, that answer will breathe something of the spirit of
the institution. Of course the great universities will answer you very
formally, or perhaps not at all. Their attitude is the impersonal one.
They say to the world, and to the youth thereof: "Here we are. We are
perfectly prepared. We have on hand a complete stock of education.
Take it, or leave it. It is not of the slightest concern to us."

I have no quarrel with that attitude. These institutions are going on
the assumption that you already have character and purpose; that you
already know what you are about. They are ready for you if you are
ready for them. And if you are not ready for them, if you are only a
rich person or a mere stroller along the highways of life, what is
that to them? Why should it be anything to them? Why should it be
anything to anybody? The world is busy, young man; you have got to
make yourself worth while if it pays any attention to you.

Making sure always that the college of your choice is well equipped,
select the one where you will feel the most at home. Other things
being equal, go where there are the most men in whose blood burns the
fire which is racing through your veins. Go to the college in whose
atmosphere you will find most of the ozone of earnestness. It may well
be that you will find this thing in one of the smaller colleges, of
which there are so many and such excellent ones scattered all over the
Nation.

Certainly these little colleges have this advantage: their students
are usually very poor boys, who have to struggle and deny themselves
to go to college at all--young men whose det