ut which no life can be a
success."

"Lacked ability and push."--Push _is_ ability. Laziness is lack of
push. Nothing can take the place of push. Push means industry and
endurance and everlasting stick-to-it-ive-ness.

"A somewhat varied experience of men has led me, the longer I live,"
said a great man, "to set less value on mere cleverness; to attach more
and more importance to industry and physical endurance."

Goethe said that industry is nine-tenths of genius, and Franklin that
diligence is the mother of good luck. A thousand other tongues and
pens have lauded work. Idleness and shiftlessness may be set down as
causing a large part of the failures of the world.

On every side we see persons who started out with good educations and
great promise, but who have gradually "gone to seed." Their early
ambition oozed out, their early ideals gradually dropped to lower
standards. Ambition is a spring that sets the apparatus going. All
the parts may be perfect, but the lack of a spring is a fatal defect.
Without wish to rise, desire to accomplish and to attain, no life will
succeed largely.

"Chief among the causes which bring positive failure or a disappointing
portion of half success to thousands of honest strugglers is
vacillation," said Thomas B. Bryan.

Many a business man has made his fortune by promptly deciding at some
nice juncture to expose himself to a considerable risk. Yet many
failures are caused by ill-advised changes and causeless vacillation of
purpose. The vacillating man, however strong in other respects, is
always pushed aside in the race of life by the determined man, the
decisive man, who knows what he wants to do and does it; even brains
must give way to decision. One could almost say that no life ever
failed that was steadfastly devoted to one aim, if that aim were not in
itself unworthy.

I am a great believer in a college education, but a great many college
graduates have made failures of their lives who might have succeeded
had they not gone to college, because they depended upon theoretical,
impractical knowledge to help them on, and were not willing to begin at
the bottom after graduation.

On every hand we see men who did well in college, but who do very
poorly in life. They stood high in their classes, were conscientious,
hard workers, but somehow when they get out into life, they do not seem
able to catch on. They are not practical. It would be hard to tell
why they ne