stay—the kind of books you would like to be as a man.

The Rubaiyat would deserve mention but for the danger of misunderstanding its message. Rightly read Omar Khayyam's lesson is serenity and poise and that power and happiness which come from these. The disciple of the tent-maker is not apt to lose his bearings. He no longer regards to-day as eternity, no longer looks at the world and the universe from himself as a center. Reject the Persian poet's apotheosis of wine, absorb his philosophy of calmness, and you will do your duty regardless of consequences. And that is the chief thing, is it not?

Do your duty, have the courage of your thought, and walk off with the old fatalist's verse soothing your soul and brain, and let the disturbed ones clamor. The clamor will cease in time and turn to applause. And whether it does or not is a matter of absolutely no importance if you have done right.

There is nothing which will more conserve the nervous forces of any serious-minded young man, nothing which will give him so much of that composure of mind and necessary concentration of powers, as the resolution to do his best and let it go at that, whether the world applaud, or laugh, or rage. Be true to your deed, whatever it may have been, and if the deed was true, the end must necessarily be satisfactory.

Burns, of course, we must read. We must have him to keep the milk of human kindness flowing in our veins—to keep sweet and sincere and loving. The good that you get from Burns cannot be analyzed. You cannot say, "I have read Burns, and find in him of wisdom so many grains, of humor so many grains, of beauty of expression so many grains," and so forth and so on to the end.

It is the general effect of Burns that is so valuable, so indispensable. Read a little bit of Burns every day, and you will find it very hard to be unkind; you are conscious that you are more human. A mellow and delightful sympathy for your fellow man—aye, and for all living things—warms your heart. And this human quality is more valuable than all the riches of all the lords of wealth.

At all cost keep your capacity for human sympathy.

The sharp, hard processes of our strictly business civilization tend to regulate even our sympathies into a system. It is as if we should say each day, "I have time to-day for five minutes of human sympathy," and promptly push the button of our stop-watch when the second-hand shows that the time has expired. Burns is the best corrective of this that I know—the best, that is, outside of the Bible itself.

Indeed the more one thinks about it the clearer it is that we might throw away all other books but the Bible, and still have all our mental and moral needs ministered to by those who through all time have thought and felt most highly; for the Bible is the record of the loftiest of all human expression, not to mention its divine origin.

Put your Bible, your Shakespeare, your Burns in your bundle when you go for a journey, and you are intellectually and spiritually equipped.

Let a man have the courage of his thought—I repeat it. Courage is where we fail, not intellect. We hear much about intellect, about "brains," as the rather coarse expression is. It is not that which is needed; it is courage.

Enter into conversation the next time you are at the club, or in a hotel, or restaurant, or wherever you meet men in intellectual hospitality, on almost any subject you may choose, you will be amazed at the information, the original thought, the keen analysis, even the constructive ideas of most of the men there.

One of the most fertile minds I have ever known is nothing but an unsuccessful lawyer in a country town; yet his intellect is as tropical, and as accurate, too, as was Napoleon's, or Gould's.

How is it that all these people do not achieve the successes to which their mere thinking entitles them? I say, to which their mere thinking entitles them, because—I say it again—if you will put them beside the great masters of affairs you will find that they have as many ideas as have these captains of business. My young friend, it is simply because they have not courage and constancy. Long ago I catalogued the qualities that make up character, in relative importance, as follows:

First: Sincerity; fidelity, the ability to be true—true to friends, true to ideas, true to ideals, true to your task, true to the truth Who shall deny that the martyrs Nero burned did not experience joys in the consuming flame more delicate and sweet than ever thrilled epicure or lover?

Second (and well-nigh first): Courage—the godlike quality that dreads not; the unanalyzable thing in man that makes him execute his conception—no matter how insane or absurd it may appear to others—if it appears rational to him, and then stride ahead to his next great deed, regardless of the gossips.

Third: Reserve—the power to hold one's forces in check, as a general disposes his army in an engagement on which the fate of an empire or of the world may depend. This power of reserve involves silence. Talk all you please, but keep your large conceptions to yourself till the hour to strike arrives, and then strike with all your might.

In politics they call some men "rubber shoes"; such men continue long, but they never achieve highly. Do not try to cultivate this quality if Nature has been so kind as not to endow you with it. It is not a masterful quality. Have the courage not only of your convictions—that is not so hard—but have the courage of your conceptions. But do not simulate courage if you have it not. False courage is worse than cowardice—it is falsehood and cowardice combined.

Reserve also includes the power to wait; and that is almost as crucial a test of greatness as courage itself. Many a battle has been lost by over-eagerness. There was the greatness of Fate itself in the order of the American officer of the Revolution who said, "Wait, men, until you see the whites of their eyes."

Time is a young man's greatest ally. That is why youth holds the whip-hand of the world. That is why youth can afford to dare. It is also why age does not dare to dare. With youth, to-morrow is merely an accession of power; but with age—ah, well, with age, as Omar says,