only thing needful to secure his fortune. How
absurd is this; let the young man know now, that he is unworthy of
success so long as he harbors such ideas. No man can gain true success,
no matter how situated, unless he depends upon no one but himself;
remember that. Does not history bear us out in this? We remember the
adage, "Few boys who are born with a silver spoon in their mouth ever
achieve greatness." By this we would not argue that wealth is
necessarily derogatory to the success of youth; to the contrary, we
believe it can be a great help in certain cases and conditions; but we
have long since discarded the idea that early wealth is a pre-eminent
factor in success; if we should give our unbiased opinion, we should say
that, to a vast majority of cases, it is a pre-eminent factor of
failure. Give a youth wealth, and you only too often destroy all
self-reliance which he may possess.

Let that young man rejoice, rather, whom God hath given health and a
faculty to exercise his faculties. The best kind of success is not that
which comes by accident, for as it came by chance it will go by chance.
The wisest charity, in a vast majority of cases, is helping people to
help themselves. Necessity is very often the motive power which sets in
motion the sluggish energies. We thus readily see that poverty can be an
absolute blessing to youth. A man's true position in the world is that
which he himself attains.

How detestable to us is the Briton's reverence of pedigree. Americans
reverence achievement, and yet we are tending towards the opposite.
Witness society, as it bows with smile and honor to the eight-dollar
clerk, while frowning on the eighteen dollar laborer. This is wrong;
work is work, and all work is honorable. It is not only wrong, but
disgraceful. It is better to make our ancestry proud of us than to be
proud of our ancestors. He is a man for what he does, not for what his
father or his friends have done. If they have given him a position, the
greater is his shame for sinking beneath that position. The person who
is above labor or despises the laborer, is himself one of the most
despicable creatures on God's earth. He not only displays a dull
intelligence of those nobler inspirations with which God has endowed us,
but he even shows a lack of plain common sense.

The noblest thing in this world is work. Wise labor brings order out of
chaos; it builds cities; it distinguishes barbarism from civilization;
it bring