One day, one night, one morning, or one noon,
One freighted hour, one moment opportune,
One rift through which sublime fulfillments gleam,
One space when fate goes tiding with the stream,
One Once, in balance 'twixt Too Late, Too Soon,
And ready for the passing instant's boon
To tip in favor the uncertain beam.
Ah, happy he who, knowing how to wait,
Knows also how to watch and work and stand
On Life's broad deck alert, and at the prow
To seize the passing moment, big with fate,
From Opportunity's extended hand,
When the great clock of destiny strikes Now!
MARY A. TOWNSEND.

What is opportunity to a man who can't use it? An unfecundated egg,
which the waves of time wash away into non-entity.--GEORGE ELIOT.

The secret of success in life is for a man _to be ready for his
opportunity_ when it comes.--DISRAELI.

"There are no longer any good chances for young men," complained a
youthful law student to Daniel Webster. "There is always room at the
top," replied the great statesman and jurist.

No chance, no opportunities, in a land where thousands of poor boys
become rich men, where newsboys go to Congress, and where those born in
the lowest stations attain the highest positions? The world is all
gates, all opportunities to him who will use them. But, like Bunyan's
Pilgrim in the dungeon of Giant Despair's castle, who had the key of
deliverance all the time with him but had forgotten it, we fail to rely
wholly upon the ability to advance all that is good for us which has
been given to the weakest as well as the strongest. We depend too much
upon outside assistance.

"We look too high
For things close by."

A Baltimore lady lost a valuable diamond bracelet at a ball, and
supposed that it was stolen from the pocket of her cloak. Years
afterward she washed the steps of the Peabody Institute, pondering how
to get money to buy food. She cut up an old, worn-out, ragged cloak to
make a hood, when lo! in the lining of the cloak she discovered the
diamond bracelet. During all her poverty she was worth $3500, but did
not know it.

Many of us who think we are poor are rich in opportunities, if we could
only see them, in possibilities all about us, in faculties worth more
than diamond bracelets. In our large Eastern cities it has been found
that at least ninety-four out of every hundred found their first
fortune at home, or near at hand, and in meeting common every-d