bition,
and set his feet in the path of self-development.

I have known several men who never realized their possibilities until
they reached middle life. Then they were suddenly aroused, as if from
a long sleep, by reading some inspiring, stimulating book, by listening
to a sermon or a lecture, or by meeting some friend,--someone with high
ideals,--who understood, believed in, and encouraged them.

It will make all the difference in the world to you whether you are
with people who are watching for ability in you, people who believe in,
encourage, and praise you, or whether you are with those who are
forever breaking your idols, blasting your hopes, and throwing cold
water on your aspirations.

The chief probation officer of the children's court in New York, in his
report for 1905, says: "Removing a boy or girl from improper
environment is the first step in his or her reclamation." The New York
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, after thirty years
of investigation of cases involving the social and moral welfare of
over half a million of children, has also come to the conclusion that
environment is stronger than heredity.

Even the strongest of us are not beyond the reach of our environment.
No matter how independent, strong-willed, and determined our nature, we
are constantly being modified by our surroundings. Take the best-born
child, with the greatest inherited advantages, and let it be reared by
savages, and how many of its inherited tendencies will remain? If
brought up from infancy in a barbarous, brutal atmosphere, it will, of
course, become brutal. The story is told of a well-born child who,
being lost or abandoned as an infant, was suckled by a wolf with her
own young ones, and who actually took on all the characteristics of the
wolf,--walked on all fours, howled like a wolf, and ate like one.

It does not take much to determine the lives of most of us. We
naturally follow the examples about us, and, as a rule, we rise or fall
according to the strongest current in which we live. The poet's "I am
a part of all that I have met" is not a mere poetic flight of fancy; it
is an absolute truth. Everything--every sermon or lecture or
conversation you have heard, every person who has touched your
life--has left an impress upon your character, and you are never quite
the same person after the association or experience. You are a little
different,--modified somewhat from what you were before,