ness.
As they fail to make themselves strong and serene, their work bears the
marks of haste and feebleness, for work reveals character; it is the
likeness of the doer, as style shows the man. Then the young are blinded
by the glitter and glare of life, by the splendors of position and
wealth; they are drawn to what is external; they would be here and
there; they love the unchartered liberty of chance desires, and are
easily brought to look upon the task of self-improvement as a slavish
work. They would have done with study that they may be free, may enter
into what they suppose to be a fair and rich heritage. They cannot
understand that so long as they are narrow, sensual, and unenlightened,
the possession of a world could not make them high or happy. They do not
know that to have liberty, without the power of using it for worthy
ends, is a curse not a blessing. They imagine that experience of the
world's ways and wickedness will make them wise, whereas it will make
them depraved.

How can they realize that the good of life consists in being, and not in
having? that we are worth what our knowledge, love, admiration, hope,
faith, and desire make us worth? They will not perceive that happiness
and unhappiness are conditions of soul, and consequently that the wise,
the loving, and the strong, whatever their outward fortune, are happy,
while the ignorant, the heartless, and the weak are miserable. To know
ourselves, we should seek to discover the kind of life our influence
tends to create. Consider the kind of world college boys make for
themselves, the things they admire, the companions they find pleasant,
the subjects in which they take interest, the books that delight
them,--and one great cause of the failure of education will be made
plain; for though they are sent to school to be taught by professors,
their influence upon one another is paramount. Instead of helping one
another to see that their real business is to educate themselves, they
persuade one another that life is given for common ends and vulgar
pleasures. Hence they look with envy upon their companions who are the
sons of rich men, as they have not lived long enough to learn that the
fate of four fifths of the sons of rich men in this country, is moral
and physical ruin. If such is the public opinion of the world in which
they live; and if even strong men are feeble in the presence of public
opinion,--how shall we find fault with them for not being attracte