lgence.

It is a great thing to understand yourself as you are, and then to go
ahead and make yourself what you desire to be.

When a carpenter starts to build a house, he knows just what tools and
what materials to work with are his. If there is a broken implement, he
replaces it with another, and if he is short of material he supplies it.
But young men set forth to make futures and fortunes, with no knowledge
of their own equipment.

They do not know their own strongest or weakest traits, and are
unprepared for the temptations and obstacles that await them.

I would advise you to call in the aid of all the occult sciences, to
help you in forming an estimate of your own higher and lower tendencies,
and in deciding for what line of occupation you were best fitted. Then,
after you have compared the statistics so gathered with your own idea of
yourself, you should proceed to make your character what you wish it to
be.

This work will be ten thousand times more profitable to you than a mere
routine of college studies, gained by running in debt.

To know yourself is far better knowledge than to know Virgil. And to
make yourself is a million times better than to have any one else make
you.

To Miss Elsie Dean

_Regarding the Habit of Exaggeration_

During your visit here with my niece, I became much interested in you.

Zoe had often written me of her affection for you, and I can readily
understand her feeling, now that I have your personal acquaintance.

You have no mother, and your father, you say, absorbed in business, like
so many American fathers, seems almost a stranger. Even the most devoted
fathers, rarely understand their daughters.

Now, I want to take the part of a mother and write you to-day, as I
would write my own daughter, had one been bestowed upon me with the many
other blessings which are mine.

I could not ask for a fairer, more amiable, or brighter daughter than
you, nor one possessed of a kinder or more unselfish nature.

You are lovable, entertaining, industrious, and refined.

But you possess one fault which needs eradicating, or at least a
propensity which needs directing.

_It is the habit of exaggeration in conversation_.

I noticed that small happenings, amusing or exciting, became events of
colossal importance when related by you.

I noticed that brief remarks were amplified and grew into something like
orations when you repeated them.

I confess that you made small