s the late Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution,
Washington.

Douglas Jerrold once knew a man who was familiar with twenty-four
languages but could not express a thought in one of them.

We should guard against a talent which we cannot hope to practice 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 with his magnificent powers, disappointed the expectations of his
friends. He spread himself over the whole field of knowledge and
elegant culture; but the mention of the name of Everett does not call
up any one great achievement as does that of names like Garrison and
Phillips. Voltaire called the Frenchman La Harpe an oven which was
always heating, but which never cooked anything. Hartley Coleridge was
splendidly endowed with talent, like Sir James Mackintosh, but there
was one fatal lack in his character--he had no definite purpose, and
his life was a failure. Unstable as water, he could not excel.
Southey, his uncle, says:

"Coleridge has two left hands." He was so morbidly shy from living
alone in his dreamland that he could not open a letter without
trembling. He would often rally from his purposeless life, and resolve
to redeem himself from the oblivion he saw staring him in the face;
but, like Mackintosh, he remained a man of promise merely to the end of
his life.

The world always makes way for the man with a purpose in him, like
Bismarck or Grant. Look at Rufus Choate, concentrating all his
attention first on one juryman, then on another, going back over the
whole line again and again, until he has burned his arguments into
their souls; until he has hypnotized them with his purpose; until they
see with his eyes, think his thoughts, feel his sensations. He never
stopped until he had projected his mind into theirs, and permeated
their lives with his individuality. There was no escape from his
concentration of purpose, his persuasive rhetoric, his convincing
logic. "Carry the jury at all ha