upon us in old
age. All important, therefore, is the choice of an ideal; for this more
than rules or precepts will determine what we are to become. The love of
the best is twin-born with the soul. What is the best? What is the
worthiest life-aim? It must be something which is within the reach of
every one, as Nature's best gifts--air and sunshine and water--belong to
all. What only the few can attain, cannot be life's real end or the
highest good. The best is not far removed from any one of us, but is
alike near to the poor and the rich, to the learned and the ignorant, to
the shepherd and the king, and only the best can give to the soul
repose and contentment. What then is the true life-ideal? Recalling to
mind the thoughts and theories of many men, I can find nothing better
than this, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." "Love not pleasure," says
Carlyle, "love God. This is the everlasting Yea, wherein all
contradiction is solved; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with
him."

To the high and aspiring heart of youth, fame, honor, glory, appeal with
such irresistible power, and appear clad in forms so beautiful, that at
a time of life when all of us are unreal in our sentiments and crude in
our opinions, they are often mistaken for the best. But fame is good
only in so far as it gives power for good. For the rest, it is nominal.
They who have deserved it care not for it. A great soul is above all
praise and dispraise of men, which are ever given ignorantly and without
fine discernment. The popular breath, even when winnowed by the winds of
centuries, is hardly pure.

And then fame cannot be the good of which I speak, for only a very few
can even hope for it. To nearly all, the gifts which make it possible
are denied; and to others, the opportunities. Many, indeed, love and win
notoriety, but such as they need not detain us here. A lower race of
youth, in whom the blood is warmer than the soul, think pleasure life's
best gift, and are content to let occasion die, while they revel in the
elysium of the senses. But to make pleasure an end is to thwart one's
purpose, for joy is good only when it comes unbidden. The pleasure we
seek begins already to pall. It is good, indeed, if it come as
refreshment to the weary, solace to the heavy-hearted, and rest to the
careworn; but if sought for its own sake, it is "the honey of poison
flowers and all the measureless ill." Only the young, or the depraved,
can believe that to