eted work looks easy or reads easy, that it must have been done
easily. But the geniuses of the world have all put upon record their
conviction that there is more virtue in perspiration than in
inspiration. The great poets, whether in print or in paint, have spent
their weeks and months--yes, years--composing, adjusting, putting in
and taking out. They have known what it is to 'lick things into
shape,' to labor and be baffled, to despair and to hope anew."

With the dawning of every morning, life comes bringing to us a new and
wonderful day to employ it as we will. Shall it be a fine, gratifying
success, or shall it be a failure? Shall it be part success and part
failure? There can be no doubt about it being a matter that is very
largely in our own keeping.

MORNING GATES

Each golden dawn presents two gates
That open to the day;
Through one a path of joy awaits,
Through one a weary way.
Choose well, for by that choice is willed
If ye shall be distressed
At eventide, or richly filled
With strength and peace and rest.

"Every true life," says J. R. Miller, "should be a perpetual climbing
upward. We should put our faults under our feet, and make them steps
on which to lift ourselves daily a little higher.... We never in this
world get to a point where we may regard ourselves as having reached
life's goal, as having attained the loftiest height within our reach;
there are always other rounds of the ladder to climb."

So we know that the purpose of life is not to make a failure of it.
And we know that we cannot make it a success unless we work toward
that end. "The first great rule is, we must do something--that life
must have a purpose and an aim--that work should be not merely
occasional and spasmodic, but steady and continuous," says Lecky.
"Pleasure is a jewel which will retain its luster only when it is in a
setting of work, and a vacant life is one of the worst of pains,
though the islands of leisure that stud a crowded, well-occupied life
may be among the things to which we look back with the greatest
delight."

There can be no interest where there is no purpose. How tiresome it
would very soon become if we were compelled to make idle, useless
marks upon paper, without any design whatsoever. But to be able to
draw pictures is a delight that no one can forego. "The most pitiable
life is the aimless life," says Jenkin Lloyd Jones. "Heaven help the
man