rehouse made
up his mind to add to his list of customers a certain Michigan firm.
Repeated rebuffs did not daunt him. Every sixty days he sent the firm a
letter of invitation to buy his goods. During twenty-seven years one
hundred and sixty-one letters were mailed without result. Then, in reply
to the one hundred and sixty-second letter, the Michigan firm asked for
quotations. These were given promptly, and two carloads of paper were
sold. What if this letter writer had become discouraged before he wrote
this final letter?

"I thought you were planning to complete your education," a friend said
to a young man whom he had not seen for some time; "yet now you are
clerking in a store. Perhaps, though, you are earning money for next
year's expenses."

"No, I am earning money for this year's expenses," was the discouraged
reply. "I did want an education, but I found it was too difficult to get
what I sought, so I have decided to settle down."

Of course it is easier to give up than it is to push on in the face of
difficulty, but the youth who pushes on is fitting himself to fill a
man's place in the world, while the young man who is easily discouraged
is fitting himself for nothing but disappointment. The world has no
place for a quitter.

There is a tonic for young people who purpose to make the most of
themselves in glimpses of a few college students who had the courage to
face difficulty. One of these was an Italian boy, who was glad to beat
carpets, wash windows, scrub kitchen floors, mow lawns, teach grammar,
arithmetic and vocal exercises at a night school for foreigners.
Then--as if his time was not fully occupied by these occupations--he
made arrangements to care for a furnace and sift the ashes, in exchange
for piano lessons. That student finished his preparatory course with
credit, taking a prize for scholarship.

A seventeen-year-old boy wanted an education, but he had nine brothers
and sisters at home, and he knew that he could look for no financial
assistance from his parents. So he picked cotton at sixty cents a
hundred pounds, sawed wood, cut weeds and scrubbed floors--and thus paid
his expenses.

One student could not spare the money to pay his railroad fare to the
school of his choice. But he had a pony. So he rode the pony the entire
distance of five hundred miles, working for his expenses along the way.

A beginner in college was too full of grit to give up when bills came on
him more heavily than