ho works his
way may do it with ease and profit; or he may be seriously handicapped
both by his necessities and the time he is obliged to bestow on outside
matters. I have seen the sons of rich men lead in scholarship, and the
sons of poor men. Poverty under most of the conditions in which we
find it in colleges is a spur. Dartmouth College, I think, furnishes a
good example. The greater part of its patronage is from poor men.
Without examining the statistics, I should say, from facts that have
fallen under my observation, that a larger percentage of Dartmouth men
have risen to distinction than those of almost any other American
college."

The opportunities of to-day are tenfold what they were half a century
ago. Former President Schurman of Cornell says of his early life: "At
the age of thirteen I left home. I hadn't definite plans as to my
future. I merely wanted to get into a village, and to earn some money.

"My father got me a place in the nearest town,--Summerside,--a village
of about one thousand inhabitants. For my first year's work I was to
receive thirty dollars and my board. Think of that, young men of
to-day! Thirty dollars a year for working from seven in the morning
until ten at night! But I was glad to get the place. It was a start
in the world, and the little village was like a city to my country eyes.

"From the time I began working in the store until to-day, I have always
supported myself, and during all the years of my boyhood I never
received a penny that I did not earn myself. At the end of my first
year, I went to a larger store in the same town, where I was to receive
sixty dollars a year and my board. My salary was doubled; I was
getting on swimmingly.

"I kept this place for two years, and then I gave it up, against the
wishes of my employer, because I had made up my mind that I wanted to
get a better education. I determined to go to college.

"I did not know how I was going to do this, except that it must be by
my own efforts. I had saved about eighty dollars from my
store-keeping, and that was all the money I had in the world.

"When I told my employer of my plan, he tried to dissuade me from it.
He pointed out the difficulties in the way of my going to college, and
offered to double my pay if I would stay in the store.

"That was the turning-point in my life. In one side was the certainty
of one hundred and twenty dollars a year, and the prospect of promotion
as fast