do everything, and do it well. All knowledge may be made useful, and I
would urge the obtaining of all possible; but it is a mistake to try to
do too much, and do nothing. A few things well understood are of more
value than a smattering of much. By all means avoid being
"Jack-of-all-trades." Decide what you want to do and do it. I would
urge the training of mind and heart and hand as a specialty in that
which you select as a life work, embellished and perfected by all the
general knowledge that a life of intense application will enable you to
possess. Difference in occupation demands a difference in special
culture, but not in general. This is culture, not of the schools,
simply, but of life.

But the difficulties and the means of self-culture need now to be
considered. In doing this, the first essential element to success to
which your attention is called, is

SELF-RELIANCE.

No man ever amounted to much who did not rely on God and himself. The
young man who whines around, waiting for some one to help him, instead
of helping himself, ought to be sent back to the nursery, clothed in
enlarged baby-gowns, and fed with a spoon. Men of independence are the
men that move the world. The living rarely walk well in the shoes of
the dead, and he who waits for them ought to go barefooted all his
life. God helps those who help themselves. Self-reliance toughens our
sinews and develops our manhood. "It is not in the sheltered garden or
the hothouse, but on the rugged Alpine cliffs where the storm bursts
most violently, that the toughest plants are reared." The man who does
not rely on self, soon ceases to have any self. He becomes a zoological
parasite, instead of a man. He is a lobster that waits for the sea to
come to him, instead of going to it, though its waves may be dashing at
his feet. Should the sea accommodate him in time, well enough;
otherwise he dies. These men make the subjunctive heroes of the world.
They always "might," "could," "would" or "should" do some great thing;
but they never get into the imperative mood to do it. They have never
learned self-reliance; and, the result is, they never learned anything
worth knowing. They can never appreciate this saying of the immortal
Burke: "I was not rocked and swaddled and dandled into a legislator.
_Nitor in adversum_ is the motto for a man like me."

Those who are afraid to move without the arms of a rich ancestry around
them, will never learn to walk erect. The