er behind a ball in a rifle
will do more execution than a carload of powder unconfined. The
rifle-barrel is the purpose that gives direct aim to the powder, which
otherwise, no matter how good it might be, would be powerless. The
poorest scholar in school or college often, in practical life, far
outstrips the class leader or senior wrangler, simply because what
little ability he has he employs for a definite object, while the
other, depending upon his general ability and brilliant prospects,
never concentrates his powers.

It is fashionable to ridicule the man of one idea, but the men who have
changed the front of the world have been men of a single aim. No man
can make his mark on this age of specialties who is not a man of one
idea, one supreme air, one master passion. The man who would make
himself felt on this bustling planet, who would make a breach in the
compact conservatism of our civilization, must play all his guns on one
point. A wavering aim, a faltering purpose, has no place in the
twentieth century. "Mental shiftlessness" is the cause of many a
failure. The world is full of unsuccessful men who spend their lives
letting empty buckets down into empty wells.

"Mr. A. often laughs at me," said a young American chemist, "because I
have but one idea. He talks about everything, aims to excel in many
things; but I have learned that, if I ever wish to make a breach, I
must play my guns continually upon one point." This great chemist,
when an obscure schoolmaster, used to study by the light of a pine knot
in a log cabin. Not many years later he was performing experiments in
electro-magnetism before English earls, and subsequently he was at the
head of one of the largest scientific institutes of this country. He
was the late Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution,
Washington.

We should guard against a talent which we can not hope to practise in
perfection, says Goethe. Improve it as we may, we shall always, in the
end, when the merit of the matter has become apparent to us, painfully
lament the loss of time and strength devoted to such botching. An old
proverb says: "The master of one trade will support a wife and seven
children, and the master of seven will not support himself."

_It is the single aim that wins_. Men with monopolizing ambitions
rarely live in history. They do not focus their powers long enough to
burn their names indelibly into the roll of honor. Edward Everett,
even