equal to the job and
who goes bravely to his task. Don't find fault with him. Don't swear
that "There is no chance for a young man any more." That's not true,
you know. And remember always that if you do all you are fitted for,
you do as well as your abler brother, and better than he if you do
your best and he does not.

A young man whom fortune had kept from college, but who is too
stout-hearted to let that discourage him, said to me the other day: "I
don't think that a college education confers, or the absence of it
prevents, success. But I do think that where there are two men of
equal health, ability, and character, that one will be chosen who has
been to college, and to this extent the college man has a better
chance." This is true for the ordinary man--the man who is willing to
put forth no more than the ordinary effort.

But you who read--you are willing to put forth extraordinary effort,
are you not? You are willing to show these favored sons of cap and
gown that you will run as fast and as far as they, with all their
training, will you not? You are willing--yes, and determined, to use
every extra hour which your college brother, _thinking he has the
advantage of you_, will probably waste.

Very well. If you do, biography (that most inspiring of all
literature) demonstrates that your reward will be as rich as the
college man's reward. Yes, richer, for the gold which your refinery
purges from the dross of your disadvantages will be doubly refined by
the fires of your intenser effort.

In 1847 two men were born who have blessed mankind with productive
work which, rich as are now its benefits to the race, will create a
new wealth of human helpfulness with each succeeding year as long as
time endures. Both these men have lived, almost to a day, the same
number of years; both of them are still alive; both of them have
labored in neighboring sections of the same field. They are alike,
too, in character, almost duplicates in ability. Here, then, is
material for a perfect comparison.

Mark, now, the parallel. One of them was a college man, the son of a
noted educator and himself a professor in the University of Boston. He
used the gifts which God gave him for that purpose, and as long as the
transmission of human speech continues among men, the name of
Alexander Graham Bell will be rightly honored by all the world.

The other of these men could no more have gone to college than he
could have crossed the Atlanti