itto, who made shoes in an alms-house, could become the greatest
Biblical scholar of his age, where is the boy or girl to-day, under the
American flag, who cannot get a fair education and escape the many
disadvantages of ignorance?

"If a man empties his purse into his head," says Franklin, "no man can
take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best
interest."

CHAPTER VIII

YOUR OPPORTUNITY CONFRONTS YOU--WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH IT?

Never before was the opportunity of the educated man so great as
to-day. Never before was there such a demand for the trained man, _the
man who can do a thing superbly well_. At the door of every vocation
is a sign out, "Wanted--a man." No matter how many millions are out of
employment, the whole world is hunting for a man who can do things; a
trained thinker who can do whatever he undertakes a little better than
it has ever before been done. Everywhere it is the educated, the
trained man, the man whose natural ability has been enlarged, enhanced
one hundredfold by superior training, that is wanted.

On all sides we see men with small minds, but who are well educated,
pushing ahead of those who have greater capabilities, but who are only
half educated. A one-talent man, superbly trained, often gets the
place when a man with many untrained or half-trained talents loses it.
Never was ignorance placed at such a disadvantage as to-day.

While the opportunities awaiting the educated man, the college
graduate, on his entrance into practical life were never before so
great and so numerous as to-day, so also the dangers and temptations
which beset him were never before so great, so numerous, so insidious.

All education which does not elevate, refine, and ennoble its recipient
is a curse instead of a blessing. A liberal education only renders a
rascal more dishonest, more dangerous. _Educated rascality is
infinitely more of a menace to society than ignorant rascality_.

Every year, thousands of young men and young women graduate full of
ambition and hope, full of expectancy, go out from the schools, the
colleges, and the universities, with their diplomas, to face for the
first time the practical world.

There is nothing else, perhaps, which the graduate needs to be
cautioned against more than the money madness which has seized the
American people, for nothing else is more fatal to the development of
the higher, finer instincts and nobler desires.

W