tongue.

Never try to create a deeper impression than Nature creates for you, and that means never attempt to create any impression at all. For example, never try to look wise. Many a front of gravity and weight conceals an intellectual desolation. In Moscow you will find the exact external counterpart of Tolstoi. It is said that it is difficult to distinguish the philosopher from his double. Yet this duplicate in appearance of the greatest of living writers is a cab driver without even the brightness of the jehu.

Be what you are, therefore, and no more; yes, and no less—which is equally important. In a word, start right. Be honest with yourself, too. If you have started wrong, go back and start over again. But don't change more than once. Some men never finish because they are always beginning. Be careful how you choose and then stick to your second choice. A poor claim steadily worked may be better than a good one half developed. The man who makes too many starts seldom makes anything else.

But don't pretend that you have a thousand dollars in bank when you hold in your hands the statement of your overdraft. Face your account with Nature like a man. For Nature is a generous, though remorseless, financier, delivering you your just due and exacting the uttermost of your debt. Also Nature renders you a daily accounting.

And, at the very beginning, Nature writes upon the tablet of your inner consciousness an inventory of your strengths and of your weaknesses, and lists there those tasks which you are best fitted to perform—those tasks which Nature meant you to perform. For Nature put you here to do something; you were not born to be an ornament.

First, then, learn your limitations. Take time enough to think out just what you cannot do. This process of elimination will soon reduce life's possibilities for you to a few things. Of these things select the one which is nearest you, and, having selected it, put all other loves from you.

It is a business maxim in my profession that "law is a jealous mistress." It is very true, but it is not more true than it is that every other calling in life is a jealous mistress. To every man his task is the hardest, his situation the most difficult.

By finding out one's limitations is not meant, of course, what society will permit you to do, or what men will permit you to do, but what Nature will permit you to do. You have no other master than Nature. Nature's limitations only are the bounds of your success. So far as your success is concerned, no man, no set of men, no society, not even all the world of humanity, is your master; but Nature is. "We cannot," says Emerson, "bandy words with Nature, or deal with her as we deal with persons."

"Poeta nascitur, non fit," is just as applicable to lawyers and mechanics and engineers as to poets. More failures have been caused by the old idea that a man may make himself what he will, than by any single half-truth that has crept into our common speech and belief. A man may make himself what he will within the limitations Nature has set about him.

declares the Persian sage. But all that Hafiz means by that is that a Paderewski shall not attempt blacksmithing, or a Rothschild try cartooning or sculpture or watchmaking, or any man undertake that for which Nature has not fitted him.

Do we not see instances every day of men made unhappy for life, and their powers lost to the world by trying to do that for which they have no aptitude? Parents obeying the attractive theory that any boy can make himself what he pleases decide upon some ambitious career for him without considering his natural abilities and efficiencies. Usually some calling of clamorous conspicuity is selected.

Twenty years ago the law was the favorite avenue upon which fond parents would thus set the feet of their offspring; the law, they thought, would enable him better to "make his mark"—that is, to parade up and down before the public eye and fill the public ear with declamation. Even yet that profession has clientless members, miserable in their hearts over their self-consciousness that they are not lawyers and never can be lawyers, who would have been useful, prosperous, and happy if they could have been permitted to be architects or merchants or farmers or doctors or soldiers or sculptors or editors or what not.

One of the cleverest of our present-day writers of fiction started out to be a lawyer. But he could not keep his pen from paper nor restrain that mysterious instrument from tracing sketches of character and drawing pictures of human situations. Very well! He had the courage to obey the call of his preferences; and to-day, instead of being an unskillful attorney, he is noted and notable in the present-hour world of letters.

Anthony Hope in England is another illustration precisely in point. On the other hand, Erskine, who was intended by his parents for the army, was destined by Nature for the bar. This master-advocate of all the history of English jurisprudence felt it in his blood that he must practise law; and so his sword rusted while he studied Blackstone. Finally, he deserted the field for the forum, there to become the most illustrious barrister the United Kingdom has produced.

I therefore emphasize the importance of finding out what you can do best rather than what either you or your parents wish you could do best. For it seems to me that this is getting very close to the truth of life. The thoughtless commonplace that "every boy may be President" has worked mischief, sown unhappiness, and robbed humanity of useful workers.

Every boy cannot be President, and, what is more, every boy ought not to be. Let Edison remain in his laboratory and enrich mankind with his wizard wisdom. England would have lost her great explorer if Drake had tried to write plays; while Shakespeare would doubtless have been sea-sick on the decks of the Golden Hind. Let Verdi compose, and charm the universal heart with his witcheries of sound; let Cavour keep to his statesmanship, that a dismembered people may again be made one. Every man to his calling. "Let the shoemaker stick to his last," said Appelles.

Ito might have led the Japanese armies to defeat—Oyama led them to victory. But Ito created modern Japan, wrote its constitution and introduced those methods which made Oyama's successes possible. Each man succeeded because he chose to do what Nature fitted him to do.

Of course you may be fitted for more than one thing. Cæsar could have equaled if not surpassed Cicero in mere oratory had he not preferred to find, in war and government, a fame more enduring. But, if you try all things for which you may be equipped by Nature, you will so scatter your energies through the delta of your aptitudes that your very wealth and variety of gifts neutralizes them all. No. Pick out one of the things you can do well and let the others go. A tree is pruned on the same principle. Stick to one thing. Beware of your versatilities.

Your life's work chosen give wing to your imagination. Behold yourself preeminent in your field of effort. Dream of yourself as the best civil engineer of your time, or the soundest banker or ablest merchant. If you are a farmer fancy yourself the master of all the secrets science is daily discovering in this most engaging of occupations; picture yourself as the man who has accomplished most in the realm of agriculture.

Set for yourself the ideal of perfection in your calling—being sure that it is Nature's calling. Then let your dreams become beliefs; let your imaginings develop into faith. Complete the process by