f for a principle. Words, money, all things else are
comparatively easy to give away; but when a man makes a gift of his
daily life and practise, it is plain that the truth, whatever it may
be, has taken possession of him.--LOWELL.

Let us beware of losing our enthusiasm. Let us ever glory in
something, and strive to retain our admiration for all that would
ennoble, and our interest in all that would enrich and beautify our
life.--PHILLIPS BROOKS.

In the Galerie des Beaux Arts in Paris is a beautiful statue conceived
by a sculptor who was so poor that he lived and worked in a small
garret. When his clay model was nearly done, a heavy frost fell upon
the city. He knew that if the water in the interstices of the clay
should freeze, the beautiful lines would be distorted. So he wrapped
his bedclothes around the clay image. In the morning he was found
dead, but his idea was saved, and other hands gave it enduring form in
marble.

"I do not know how it is with others when speaking on an important
question," said Henry Clay; "but on such occasions I seem to be
unconscious of the external world. Wholly engrossed by the subject
before me, I lose all sense of personal identity, of time, or of
surrounding objects."

"A bank never becomes very successful," says a noted financier, "until
it gets a president who takes it to bed with him." Enthusiasm gives
the otherwise dry and uninteresting subject or occupation a new meaning.

As the young lover has finer sense and more acute vision and sees in
the object of his affections a hundred virtues and charms invisible to
all other eyes, so a man permeated with enthusiasm has his power of
perception heightened and his vision magnified until he sees beauty and
charms others cannot discern which compensate for drudgery, privations,
hardships, and even persecution. Dickens says he was haunted,
possessed, spirit-driven by the plots and characters in his stories
which would not let him sleep or rest until he had committed them to
paper. On one sketch he shut himself up for a month, and when he came
out he looked as haggard as a murderer. His characters haunted him day
and night.

"Herr Capellmeister, I should like to compose something; how shall I
begin?" asked a youth of twelve who had played with great skill on the
piano. "Pooh, pooh," replied Mozart, "you must wait." "But you began
when you were younger than I am," said the boy. "Yes, so I did," said
the great compos