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"IT WILL NOT DO !"

said, 'Doctor, only save her, and you may write down what sum you please.' But the doctor only shook his head.

"The dear thing died, and it seemed as though years were added in that little time to the age of the Bloomfields. The sorrowful are comforted of God, and let us hope God has been very tender to the poor bereaved parents. Truly Money won't do everything.

"No, money will not save us from death. I once read of a rich man, who, when dying, called for his bags of gold; and, when they were brought, he laid one of the bags on his heart. After a little while, he said—“ Take it away! It will not do! It will not do !' No, no, it is better, as some one has said, to have gold in the hand than in the heart.

"Beware, boys, of wishing to make money solely because it is money; always make it a secondary object, never the ultimate, then I can heartily say, God make you successful, for the nobler parts of your nature will not then be ruined, but kept alive and active for your fellow-creatures' good, and for the glory of your God.

"Those who make haste to get rich subject themselves to great temptations. They don't like to go the beaten highway, but choose rather to make a short cut, go a muddy by-lane, soil their conscience, degrade themselves in their own estimation and in the pure eyes of the Great Judge. Remember, 'A clear conscience is a good pillow,' and, 'Better a pain in the pocket

HASTY CLIMBERS.

65

than the heart. Solomon says, The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death;' and again, 'He who makes haste to be rich shall not be innocent.'

"Success! Yes, it is right to wish to be successful; but then you must go about it in a straight and honourable way, and in a right spirit, 'little by little,' step by step. If you watch a man climbing up a ladder, you will not see him take one spring from the bottom to the top; he goes up one rung at a time. And so with the getting on in life; it must be one step at a time, not one spring, thinking to arrive at the end directly. Recollect the proverbs, 'Hasty climbers have sudden falls,'' Haste trips up its own heels.'

"If you see boys running a race, yon will find that those who start off at their utmost speed soon tire, loose wind, drop from the front rank, lag behind, and finally come in at the end. You must husband your resources and reserve your strength. Do not expend all in one effort, like a sky-rocket, up and out in a few seconds. Cultivate the power of holding on-persevere, that is: The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.' Sometimes the tortoise wins and the hare loses. It's the power of holding on which does it, adhering firmly and steadfastly to one pursuit, one object at a time.

"A proverb says-' The tree often transplanted is never laden with fruit,' and a youth who skips first to one thing and then to another, and then to a third, is

E

66

THE SCHOLAR'S MOTTO.

not likely to gain much from either. Keep steady to one thing at a time. Some one has said that a butterfly visits more flowers in the course of a day than a bee, but which gathers the most honey? There is a story told of a Chinese student who, when advised by his friends to change his occupation to one in which he might have a greater chance of success, cast an iron slab as an emblem of his unalterable determination, saying: When by grinding my ink I wear a hole through this, then will my resolution change.'

'No

"The secret of all success is perseverance. thing is hard to a willing mind. It is the hardest part of success to gain a little; that once gained, more will easily follow.' A celebrated scholar took for his emblem a man hewing away at a mountain with a pickaxe, with the motto underneath, 'Little by little.

"It is because lads are impatient, and expect too much from a single effort, that they are not more successful. Recollect what a wise man has said: 'To create a little flower is the work of ages;' and to be successful, you must toil more than a single night.

"Most boys start off without any knowledge of the real elements of success, and are discouraged and give up in despair because they fail; whereas, if they would only use what brains nature has blessed them with, they might save themselves from such a fate. If y set off on a journey of a dozen miles, and at the end of the first mile sit down disappointed because the journey is not finished, you will never accomplish it—

you

LORD BROUGHAM'S MAXIMS.

67

yet it is in some such spirit that many lads set out to be successful—but if, after the first mile, you still keep on perseveringly, you will feel that every step you take brings you nearer your desired end.

"Says the Chinese proverb, 'If one has a mind to beat the stone, the stone will have a hole in it.' And there is a story told of a youth who, as he one day went home from school, saw a woman grinding an iron crowbar, and, asking her why she was doing so, the woman replied, that she intended grinding it down to make a needle. An illustration of perseverance, and as I have before said, perseverance is one of the principal elements of success.

"Another is contained in the proverb which says, 'Never put off till to-morrow what can be done to-day.' This is one of the proverbs to which Lord Brougham is said to have owed all his success; and although a witty Frenchman has said, that he owed all his to 'Never doing to-day what he could put off till to-morrow,' I fancy he found very few things he could put off. The farmers have a wise saying, which runs-' What ought to be done to-day, do it, for to-morrow it may rain,' meaning to say, that if a man neglects the opportunity to do a thing which ought to be done, the opportunity may never occur again.

"Another thing you should bear in mind, and which also constitutes another element of success, is to do one thing at a time - this was another of Lord Brougham's maxims. Powers and energies are

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THE SPIDER'S BREAKFAST.

wasted by being expended on too many things at a time; by having too many irons in the fire, not one gets thoroughly heated, and the whole of them very often puts the fire out; the stream which branches off in a great many directions, so that the water is shallow when it reaches the mill-wheel, does not turn it very swiftly, and consequently, grinds very little

corn.

"One morning, a spider began to weave his web on the branch of a tree, just in the neighbourhood of a plump young fly, which the spider intended should serve him for his breakfast, if he could but finish his web and invite it in before it should fly away. By the time the web was half-spun, a gay-winged butterfly alighted close by. 'Ay,' said the spider, 'that looks more attractive; if I could but get him now, I should have a delicate morsel.' Leaving his half-spun web, away ran the spider to commence a new one near the butterfly; but before he had anything liked finished it, the butterfly spread its wings and flew away; so, with a growl of disappointment, he ran back to web number one; but had no sooner begun his work anew, when a magnificent fat blue bottle settled itself on a twig a little further off. 'Oh! there's a beauty. If I can only catch him!' and away he scampered for victim number three.

"And so the spider kept running from one twig to another, attracted by first this opportunity for securing a fine victim, and then by that, until he had con