men to keep commonplace
books. We cannot too heartily recommend this habit of taking notes. It
is a great aid to memory, and it helps wonderfully to locate or to find
for future use what we have read. It helps to assimilate and make our
own whatever we read. The habit of taking notes of lectures and sermons
is an excellent one. One of the greatest aids to education is the habit
of writing out an analysis or a skeleton of a book or article after we
have read it; also of a sermon or a lecture. This habit has made many a
strong, vigorous thinker and writer. In this connection we cannot too
strongly recommend the habit of saving clippings from our readings
wherever possible of everything which would be likely to assist us in
the future. These scrap-books, indexed, often become of untold
advantage, especially if in the line of our work. Much of what we call
genius in great men comes from these note-books and scrap-books.

How many poor boys and girls who thought they had "no chance" in life
have been started upon noble careers by the grand books of Smiles, Todd,
Mathews, Munger, Whipple, Geikie, Thayer, and others.

You should bring your mind to the reading of a book, or to the study of
any subject, as you take an axe to the grindstone; not for what you get
from the stone, but for the sharpening of the axe. While it is true that
the facts learned from books are worth more than the dust from the
stone, even in much greater ratio is the mind more valuable than the
axe. Bacon says: "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be
read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few
to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Reading maketh a
full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and,
therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he
confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he
had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories
make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy
deep; morals grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend."

CHAPTER XXV.

RICHES WITHOUT WINGS.

Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.
--EPH. iv. I.

Abundance consists not alone in material possession, but in an
uncovetous spirit.
--SELDEN.

Less coin, less care; to know how to dispens