erent occupations to have enabled them to
reach great success, if their efforts had all been expended in one
direction. That mechanic is a failure who starts out to build an
engine, but does not _quite_ accomplish it, and shifts into some other
occupation where perhaps he will almost succeed, but stops just short
of the point of proficiency in his acquisition and so fails again. The
world is full of people who are "almost a success." They stop just
this side of success. Their courage oozes out just before they become
expert. How many of us have acquisitions which remain permanently
unavailable because not carried quite to the point of skill? How many
people "almost know a language or two," which they can neither write
nor speak; a science or two whose elements they have not quite
acquired; an art or two partially mastered, but which they can not
practice with satisfaction or profit! The habit of desultoriness,
which has been acquired by allowing yourself to abandon a half-finished
work, more than balances any little skill gained in one vocation which
might possibly be of use later.

Beware of that frequently fatal gift, versatility. Many a person
misses being a great man by splitting into two middling ones.
Universality is the _ignis fatuus_ which has deluded to ruin many a
promising mind. In attempting to gain a knowledge of half a hundred
subjects it has mastered none. "The jack-of-all-trades," says one of
the foremost manufacturers of this country, "had a chance in my
generation. In this he has none."

"The measure of a man's learning will be the amount of his voluntary
ignorance," said Thoreau. If we go into a factory where the mariner's
compass is made we can see the needles before they are magnetized, they
will point in any direction. But when they have been applied to the
magnet and received its peculiar power, from that moment they point to
the north, and are true to the pole ever after. So man never points
steadily in any direction until he has been polarized by a great master
purpose.

Give your life, your energy, your enthusiasm, all to the highest work
of which you are capable. Canon Farrar said, "There is only one real
failure in life possible, and that is, not to be true to the best one
knows."

"'What must I do to be forever known?' Thy duty ever."

Who does the best his circumstance allows,
Does well, acts nobly, angels could do no more.
YOUNG.

"Whoever can make