es across the
fabric, a perpetual witness of our folly.

No one is anxious about a young man while he is busy in useful work. But
where does he eat his lunch at noon? Where does he go when he leaves his
boarding-house at night? What does he do after supper? Where does he
spend his Sundays and holidays? The way he uses his spare moments
reveals his character. The great majority of youths who go to the bad
are ruined after supper. Most of those who climb upward to honor and
fame devote their evenings to study or work or the society of those who
can help and improve them. Each evening is a crisis in the career of a
young man. There is a deep significance in the lines of Whittier:--

This day we fashion Destiny, our web of Fate we spin;
This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin.

Time is money. We should not be stingy or mean with it, but we should
not throw away an hour any more than we would throw away a dollar-bill.
Waste of time means waste of energy, waste of vitality, waste of
character in dissipation. It means the waste of opportunities which will
never come back. Beware how you kill time, for all your future lives in
it.

"And it is left for each," says Edward Everett, "by the cultivation of
every talent, by watching with an eagle's eye for every chance of
improvement, by redeeming time, defying temptation, and scorning sensual
pleasure, to make himself useful, honored, and happy."

CHAPTER VII

HOW POOR BOYS AND GIRLS GO TO COLLEGE

"Can I afford to go to college?" asks many an American youth who has
hardly a dollar to his name and who knows that a college course means
years of sacrifice and struggle.

It seems a great hardship, indeed, for a young man with an ambition to
do something in the world to be compelled to pay his own way through
school and college by hard work. But history shows us that the men who
have led in the van of human progress have been, as a rule,
self-educated, self-made.

The average boy of to-day who wishes to obtain a liberal education has
a better chance by a hundredfold than had Daniel Webster or James A.
Garfield. There is scarcely one in good health who reads these lines
but can be assured that if he will he may. Here, as elsewhere, the
will can usually make the way, and never before was there so many
avenues of resource open to the strong will, the inflexible purpose, as
there are to-day--at this hour and this moment.

"Of the five tho