ally binding on
genius and mediocrity.

Are the results so distant that you delay the preparation in the hope
that fortuitous good luck may make it unnecessary? As well might the
husbandman delay sowing his seed until the spring and summer are past
and the ground hardened by the frosts of a rigorous winter. As well
might one who is desirous of enjoying firm health inoculate his system
with the seeds of disease, and expect at such time as he may see fit to
recover from its effects, and banish the malady. Nelaton, the great
surgeon, said that if he had four minutes in which to perform an
operation, on which a life depended, he would take one minute to
consider how best to do it.

"Many men," says Longfellow, "do not allow their principles to take
root, but pull them up every now and then, as children do flowers they
have planted, to see if they are growing." We must not only work, but
wait.

"The spruce young spark," says Sizer, "who thinks chiefly of his
mustache and boots and shiny hat, of getting along nicely and easily
during the day, and talking about the theatre, the opera, or a fast
horse, ridiculing the faithful young fellow who came to learn the
business and make a man of himself, because he will not join in wasting
his time in dissipation, will see the day, if his useless life is not
earlier blasted by vicious indulgences, when he will be glad to accept
a situation from his fellow-clerk whom he now ridicules and affects to
despise, when the latter shall stand in the firm, dispensing benefits
and acquiring fortune."

"I have been watching the careers of young men by the thousand in this
busy city of New York for over thirty years," said Dr. Cuyler, "and I
find that the chief difference between the successful and the failures
lies in the single element of staying power. Permanent success is
oftener won by holding on than by sudden dash, however brilliant. The
easily discouraged, who are pushed back by a straw, are all the time
dropping to the rear--to perish or to be carried along on the stretcher
of charity. They who understand and practice Abraham Lincoln's homely
maxim of 'pegging away' have achieved the solidest success."

"When a man has done his work," says Ruskin, "and nothing can any way
be materially altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest
with his fate if he will, but what excuse can you find for willfulness
of thought at the very lime when every crisis of fortune hangs on you