,
which a shabby alpaca cannot hide, nor a bonnet of silk enhance, nor
even sickness nor exhaustion quite drag out."

It is said that the wind never blows fair for that sailor who knows not
to what port he is bound.

"The weakest living creature," says Carlyle, "by concentrating his
powers on a single object, can accomplish something; whereas the
strongest, by dispersing his over many, may fail to accomplish
anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through
the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar
and leaves no trace behind."

"When I was young I used to think it was thunder that killed men," said
a shrewd preacher; "but as I grew older, I found it was lightning. So
I resolved to thunder less, and lighten more."

The man who knows one thing, and can do it better than anybody else,
even if it only be the art of raising turnips, receives the crown he
merits. If he raises the best turnips by reason of concentrating all
his energy to that end, he is a benefactor to the race, and is
recognized as such.

If a salamander be cut in two, the front part will run forward and the
other backward. Such is the progress of him who divides his purpose.
Success is jealous of scattered energies.

No one can pursue a worthy object steadily and persistently with all
the powers of his mind, and yet make his life a failure. You can't
throw a tallow candle through the side of a tent, but you can shoot it
through an oak board. Melt a charge of shot into a bullet, and it can
be fired through the bodies of four men. Focus the rays of the sun in
winter, and you can kindle a fire with ease.

The giants of the race have been men of concentration, who have struck
sledgehammer blows in one place until they have accomplished their
purpose. The successful men of to-day are men of one overmastering
idea, one unwavering aim, men of single and intense purpose.
"Scatteration" is the curse of American business life. Too many are
like Douglas Jerrold's friend, who could converse in twenty-four
languages, but had no ideas to express in any one of them.

"The only valuable kind of study," said Sydney Smith, "is to read so
heartily that dinner-time comes two hours before you expected it; to
sit with your Livy before you and hear the geese cackling that saved
the Capitol, and to see with your own eyes the Carthaginian sutlers
gathering up the rings of the Roman knights after the battle of Canna