s ago.
Said Seneca, nineteen hundred years ago: "Men trust rather to their eyes
than to their ears; the effect of precepts, is, therefore, slow and
tedious, while that of example is summary and effectual." Says Franklin:
"None teaches better than the ant, and she says nothing." "Not the cry"
say the Chinese, "but the flight of the wild duck, leads the flock to
fly and follow."

"CHRIST NEVER WROTE A TRACT,"

says Horace Mann. "The people look at their pastor six days in the
week," says Cecil, "to see what he means on the seventh." Says Dr.
Johnson: "Those who attain any excellence commonly spend life in one
common pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier grounds,"
and the examples of a majority of the successful men will show this to
be true. It seems to me, in conclusion, that

LIFE IS LIKE THE SYSTEM

upon which gamblers often stake their money. If they lose one, they
stake two; if they lose, they stake four; if they lose, they stake
eight; if they still lose, they stake sixteen; now if they win, they
have, of course, won one more than they have lost altogether. The banker
guards against this system by limiting their progression to a certain
figure and thus breaking it down. But in the game of life we have no
limit put upon our enterprises. We may redouble our efforts after every
failure, and we find, upon the first success, that we have, in one
stroke of prosperity, more than made ourselves whole for failures which
may have extended behind us indefinitely. You cannot fail in life if you
will stake an effort on each succeeding attempt twice as great as the
effort which lost you your last desire.

MAN

A combination and a form, indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal
To give the world assurance of a man.

His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him, that nature might stand up
And say to all the world "This was a man!"--Shakspeare.

"What a piece of worke is a man? How Noble in Reason? how
infinite in faculty? in forme and mouing how expresse and admirable? in
Action how like an Angel? in apprehension how like a God? the beauty of
the world, the Paragon of Animals?" This is the exalted panegyric of the
greatest mind so far vouchsafed to our race--this, then, was
Shakspeare's ideal of a true man. Says Emerson: "O rich and various man!
thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the morning and
the night, and the unfathomabl