seasons and years glide away?
If seeking directly and for self alone,
The true and abiding you never can stay.
But all self forgetting, know well the law,
It's the hero, and not the self-seeker, who's crowned.
Then go lose your life in the service of others,
And, lo! with rare greatness and glory 'twill abound.

Is it your ambition to become great in any particular field, to attain
to fame and honor, and thereby to happiness and contentment? Is it your
ambition, for example, to become a great _orator_, to move great masses
of men, to receive their praise, their plaudits? Then remember that
there never has been, there never will, in brief, there never can be a
truly great orator without a great _purpose_, a great cause behind him.
You may study in all the best schools in the country, the best
universities and the best schools of oratory. You may study until you
exhaust all these, and then seek the best in other lands. You may study
thus until your hair is beginning to change its color, but this of
itself will _never_ make you a great orator. You may become a demagogue,
and, if self-centred, you inevitably will; for this is exactly what a
demagogue is,--a great demagogue, if you please, than which it is hard
for one to call to mind a more contemptible animal, and the greater the
more contemptible. But without laying hold of and building upon this
great principle you never can become a great orator.

Call to mind the greatest in the world's history, from Demosthenes--Men
of Athens, march against Philip, your country and your fellow-men will
be in early bondage unless you give them your best service now--down to
our own Phillips and Gough,--Wendell Phillips against the traffic in
human blood, John B. Gough against a slavery among his fellow-men more
hard and galling and abject than the one just spoken of; for by it the
body merely is in bondage, the mind and soul are free, while in this,
body, soul, and mind are enslaved. So you can easily discover the great
_purpose_, the great cause for _service_, behind each and every one.

The man who can't get beyond himself, his own aggrandizement and
interests, must of necessity be small, petty, personal, and at once
marks his own limitations; while he whose life is a life of service and
self-devotion has no limits, for he thus puts himself at once on the
side of the _Universal_, and this more than all else combined gives a
tremendous power in oratory