d soon lose their power if they
are not exercised. How can we expect our ambition to remain fresh and
vigorous through years of inactivity, indolence, or indifference? If
we constantly allow opportunities to slip by us without making any
attempt to grasp them, our inclination will grow duller and weaker.

"What I most need," as Emerson says, "is somebody to make me do what I
can." To do what I can, that is my problem; not what a Napoleon or a
Lincoln could do, but what _I_ can do. It makes all the difference in
the world to me whether I bring out the best thing in me or the
worst,--whether I utilize ten, fifteen, twenty-five, or ninety per cent
of my ability.

Everywhere we see people who have reached middle life or later without
being aroused. They have developed only a small percentage of their
success possibilities. They are still in a dormant state. The best
thing in them lies so deep that it has never been awakened. When we
meet these people we feel conscious that they have a great deal of
latent power that has never been exercised. Great possibilities of
usefulness and of achievement are, all unconsciously, going to waste
within them.

Some time ago there appeared in the newspapers an account of a girl who
had reached the age of fifteen years, and yet had only attained the
mental development of a small child. Only a few things interested her.
She was dreamy, inactive, and indifferent to everything around her most
of the time until, one day, while listening to a hand organ on the
street, she suddenly awakened to full consciousness. She came to
herself; her faculties were aroused, and in a few days she leaped
forward years in her development. Almost in a day she passed from
childhood to budding womanhood. Most of us have an enormous amount of
power, of latent force, slumbering within us, as it slumbered in this
girl, which could do marvels if we would only awaken it.

The judge of the municipal court in a flourishing western city, one of
the most highly esteemed jurists in his state, was in middle life,
before his latent power was aroused, an illiterate blacksmith. He is
now sixty, the owner of the finest library in his city, with the
reputation of being its best-read man, and one whose highest endeavor
is to help his fellow man. What caused the revolution in his life?
The hearing of a single lecture on the value of education. This was
what stirred the slumbering power within him, awakened his am