the people all the time, but not all the people all the time." We
cannot deceive ourselves any of the time, and the only way to enjoy our
own respect is to deserve it. What would you think of a man who would
neglect himself and treat his shadow with the greatest respect?

"Self-reliance is a grand element of character," says Michael Reynolds.
"It has won Olympic crowns and Isthmian laurels; it confers kinship with
men who have vindicated their divine right to be held in the world's
memory."

CHAPTER XXIV.

BOOKS AND SUCCESS.

Ignorance is the curse of God,
Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.
--SHAKESPEARE.

Prefer knowledge to wealth; for the one is transitory, the
other perpetual.
--SOCRATES.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it
away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best
interest.
--FRANKLIN.

My early and invincible love of reading, I would not exchange
for the treasures of India.
--GIBBON.

If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire were laid down
at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I
would spurn them all.
--FENELON.

Who of us can tell
What he had been, had Cadmus never taught
The art that fixes into form the thought,--
Had Plato never spoken from his cell,
Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?
--BULWER.

When friends grow cold and the converse of intimates languishes
into vapid civility and common-place, these only continue the
unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that
true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.
--WASHINGTON IRVING.

"Do you want to know," asks Robert Collyer, "how I manage to talk to you
in this simple Saxon? I read Bunyan, Crusoe, and Goldsmith when I was a
boy, morning, noon, and night. All the rest was task work; these were my
delight, with the stories in the Bible, and with Shakespeare, when at
last the mighty master came within our doors. The rest were as senna to
me. These were like a well of pure water, and this is the first step I
seem to have taken of my own free will toward the pulpit. * * * I took
to these as I took to milk, and, without the least idea what I was
doing, got the taste for simple words into the very fibre of my nature.
There was day-school for me until I