s not succeeded
in what he has really tried to do with all his might, he cannot succeed
at anything. Look at a fish floundering on the sand as though he would
tear himself to pieces. But look again: a huge wave breaks higher up
the beach and covers the unfortunate creature. The moment his fins
feel the water, he is himself again, and darts like a flash through the
waves. His fins mean something now, while before they beat the air and
earth in vain, a hindrance instead of a help.

If you fail after doing your level best, examine the work attempted,
and see if it really be in the line of your bent or power of
achievement. Cowper failed as a lawyer. He was so timid that he could
not plead a case, but he wrote some of our finest poems. Moliere found
that he was not adapted to the work of a lawyer, but he left a great
name in literature. Voltaire and Petrarch abandoned the law, the
former choosing philosophy, the latter, poetry. Cromwell was a farmer
until forty years old.

Very few of us, before we reach our teens, show great genius or even
remarkable talent for any line of work or study. The great majority of
boys and girls, even when given all the latitude and longitude heart
could desire, find it very difficult before their fifteenth or even
before their twentieth year to decide what to do for a living. Each
knocks at the portals of the mind, demanding a wonderful aptitude for
some definite line of work, but it is not there. That is no reason why
the duty at hand should be put off, or why the labor that naturally
falls to one's lot should not be done well. Samuel Smiles was trained
to a profession which was not to his taste, yet he practiced it so
faithfully that it helped him to authorship, for which he was well
fitted.

Fidelity to the work or everyday duties at hand, and a genuine feeling
of responsibility to our parents or employers, ourselves, and our God,
will eventually bring most of us into the right niches at the proper
time.

Garfield would not have become President if he had not previously been
a zealous teacher, a responsible soldier, a conscientious statesman.
Neither Lincoln nor Grant started as a baby with a precocity for the
White House, or an irresistible genius for ruling men. So no one
should be disappointed because he was not endowed with tremendous gifts
in the cradle. His business is to do the best he can wherever his lot
may be cast, and advance at every honorable opportunity in