he mountain
has been leveled and the way lies open. Learn, then, to will strongly
and decisively; thus fix your floating life and leave it no longer to
be carried hither and thither, like a withered leaf, by every wind that
blows. An undecided man is like the turnstile at a fair, which is in
everybody's way but stops no one.

"The secret of the whole matter was," replied Amos Lawrence, "we had
formed the habit of prompt acting, thus taking the top of the tide;
while the habit of some others was to delay till about half tide, thus
getting on the flats."

Most of the young men and women who are lost in our cities are ruined
because of their inability to say "No" to the thousand allurements and
temptations which appeal to their weak passions. If they would only
show a little decision at first, one emphatic "No" might silence their
solicitors forever. But they are weak, they are afraid of offending,
they don't like to say "No," and thus they throw down the gauntlet and
are soon on the broad road to ruin. A little resolution early in life
will soon conquer the right to mind one's own business.

An old legend says that a fool and a wise man were journeying together,
and came to a point where two ways opened before them,--one broad and
beautiful, the other narrow and rough. The fool desired to take the
pleasant way; the wise man knew that the difficult one was the shortest
and safest, and so declared. But at last the urgency of the fool
prevailed; they took the more inviting path, and were soon met by
robbers, who seized their goods and made them captives. A little later
both they and their captors were arrested by officers of the law and
taken before the judge. Then the wise man pleaded that the fool was to
blame because he desired to take the wrong way. The fool pleaded that
he was only a fool, and no sensible man should have heeded his counsel.
The judge punished them both equally. "If sinners entice thee, consent
thou not."

There is no habit that so grows on the soul as irresolution. Before a
man knows what he has done, he has gambled his life away, and all
because he has never made up his mind what he would do with it. On
many of the tombstones of those who have failed in life could be read
between the lines: "He Dawdled," "Behind Time," "Procrastination,"
"Listlessness," "Shiftlessness," "Nervelessness," "Always Behind." Oh,
the wrecks strewn along the shores of life "just behind success," "just
this