ighbor had,'--and we leave the unfinished sentence to imply
that we should have been geniuses.

"No one ever says, 'If I had not had such golden opportunities thrust
upon me, I might have developed by a struggle'! But why look back at
all? Why turn your eyes to your shadow, when, by looking upward, you see
your rainbow in the same direction?

"But our want of opportunity was our opportunity--our privations were
our privileges--our needs were stimulants; we are what we are because we
had little and wanted much; and it is hard to tell which was the more
powerful factor....

* * * * *

"Small aids to individuals, large aid to masses.

* * * * *

"The Russian Czar determined to found an observatory, and the first
thing he did was to take a million dollars from the government treasury.
He sends to America to order a thirty-five inch telescope from Alvan
Clark,--not to promote science, but to surpass other nations in the size
of his glass. 'To him that hath shall be given.' Read it, 'To him that
hath _should_ be given.'

* * * * *

"To give wisely is hard. I do not wonder that the millionaire founds a
new college--why should he not? Millionaires are few, and he is a man by
himself--he must have views, or he could not have earned a million. But
let the man or woman of ordinary wealth seek out the best institution
already started,--the best girl already in college,--and give the
endowment.

"I knew a rich woman who wished to give aid to some girls' school, and
she travelled in order to find that institution which gave the most
solid learning with the least show. She found it where few would expect
it,--in Tennessee. It was worth while to travel.

"The aid that comes need not be money; let it be a careful consideration
of the object, and an evident interest in the cause.

"When you aid a teacher, you improve the education of your children. It
is a wonder that teachers work as well as they do. I never look at a
group of them without using, mentally, the expression, 'The noble army
of martyrs'!

"The chemist should have had a laboratory, and the observatory should
have had an astronomer; but we are too apt to bestow money where there
is no man, and to find a man where there is no money.

* * * * *

"If every girl who is aided were a very high order of scholar,
scholarship would undoubtedly c