sands of students graduated every year
from our grand institutions whose object is to make stalwart,
independent, self-supporting men, turned out into the world saplings
instead of stalwart oaks, "memory-glands" instead of brainy men,
helpless instead of self-supporting, sickly instead of robust, weak
instead of strong, leaning instead of erect. "So many promising
youths, and never a finished man!"

The character sympathizes with and unconsciously takes on the nature of
the body. A peevish, snarling, ailing man can not develop the vigor
and strength of character which is possible to a healthy, robust,
cheerful man. There is an inherent love in the human mind for
_wholeness_, a demand that man shall come up to the highest standard;
and there is an inherent protest or contempt for preventable
deficiency. Nature, too, demands that man be ever at the top of his
condition.

As we stand upon the seashore while the tide is coming in, one wave
reaches up the beach far higher than any previous one, then recedes,
and for some time none that follows comes up to its mark, but after a
while the whole sea is there and beyond it. So now and then there
comes a man head and shoulders above his fellow men, showing that
Nature has not lost her ideal, and after a while even the average man
will overtop the highest wave of manhood yet given to the world.

Apelles hunted over Greece for many years, studying the fairest points
of beautiful women, getting here an eye, there a forehead and there a
nose, here a grace and there a turn of beauty, for his famous portrait
of a perfect woman which enchanted the world. So the coming man will
be a composite, many in one. He will absorb into himself not the
weakness, not the follies, but the strength and the virtues of other
types of men. He will be a man raised to the highest power. He will
be a self-centered, equipoised, and ever master of himself. His
sensibility will not be deadened or blunted by violation of Nature's
laws. His whole character will be impressionable, and will respond to
the most delicate touches of Nature.

The first requisite of all education and discipline should be
man-timber. Tough timber must come from well grown, sturdy trees.
Such wood can be turned into a mast, can be fashioned into a piano or
an exquisite carving. But it must become timber first. Time and
patience develop the sapling into the tree. So through discipline,
education, experience, the saplin