ichness of his acres.

But the German farmer on his sandy soil could take no such risks.
Every vestige of fertility that skill, science, and economy could win
from the reluctant German field was secured. The German farmer had to
woo his land like a lover. And so the unyielding fields of Germany
returned richer harvests thirty years ago than a like area of the
prodigally vital silt of the Mississippi Valley.

So what you have got to do, young man who cannot go to college, is to
develop yourself with the most vigorous care. Take your reading, for
example. Choose your books with an eye single to their helpfulness.
Let all your reading be for the strengthening of your understanding,
the increase of your knowledge.

Your more fortunate competitor who has gone to college will, perhaps,
not be doing this. He will probably be "resting his mind" with an
ephemeral novel or the discursive hop-skip-and-jump reading of current
periodicals. Thus he will day by day be weakening his strength,
diminishing his resources. At the very same time you, by the other
method, will hourly be adding to your powers, daily accumulating
useful material.

And when you read, make what you read yours. Think about it. Absorb
it. Make it a part of your mental being. Far more important than this,
make every thought you read in books, every fact which the author
furnishes you, the seed for new thoughts of your own. Remember that no
fact in the universe stands by itself, but that every fact is related
to every other fact. Trace out the connection of truth with truth, and
you will soon confront that most amazing and important of all truths,
the correlation of all force, all thought, all matter.

And thus, too will your mind acquire a trained and systematic strength
which is the chief purpose of all the training which college and
university give. For, mind you, the principal purpose of going to
college is not to acquire knowledge. That is only secondary. The chief
reason for a college education is the making of a trained mind and the
building of a sound character.

These suggestions as to reading apply to everything else: to men,
business, society, life. Because you must compete with the college
men, you cannot be careless with books--in the selection of books, or
in the use of them. For the same reason, you cannot be indifferent
with men and your relationship with them. If other men are loose and
inaccurate in reading the character of their fellows, mo