"Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," was Garfield's life philosophy; but he also understood that the thing to do was that which came next to his hand. There was no thought of the work being mean or low. Done in the spirit which he brought to the task, let the work be what it might, it was noble work. No man that has ever lived had a higher reverence for self-dependence than Garfield. Many of his expressions of self-trust are worthy to be recorded with the wisdom of the wisest. Here are a few which, if pondered and remembered, may be the incentives of a useful and successful life :

:

"There is no more common thought among young people than that foolish one, that by-and-by something will turn up by which they will suddenly achieve fame or fortune. No, young gentlemen; things don't turn up in this world unless somebody turns them up."

I feel a profounder reverence for a boy than for a man. I never meet a ragged boy on the street without feeling that I owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his shabby coat."

'There is scarcely a more pitiable sight than to see here and there learned men, so called, who have graduated in our own and the universities of Europe with high honours, and yet who could not harness a horse or make out a bill of sale if the world depended upon it."

Luck is an ignis fatuus. You may follow it to ruin, but not to success."

"A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck."

If the power to do hard work is not talent, it is the best possible substitute for it."

It is no honour of profit to appear in the arena. The wreath is for those who contend."

"I would rather be beaten in right than succeed in wrong."

"Whatever you win in life you must conquer by your own efforts, and then it is yours,-a part of yourself."

"Poets may be born, but success is made."

"If there be one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man; it is a man who dares look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil."

III.

Success in Self-Culture.

"Wake! thou that sleepest in enchanted bowers,
Lest these last years should haunt thee in the night,
When Death is waiting for thy numbered hours

To take their swift and everlasting flight.

Wake! ere the earth-born charm unnerve thee quite,
And be thy thoughts to work divine addressed;

Do something, do it soon, with all thy might:

'Tis infamy to die and not be missed,

Or let all soon forget that thou didst e'er exist."

UCCESS in life cannot be obtained without self-culture, which is education, or development, aided and helped by self, as distin

guished from the training supplied by schools, teachers, and universities. The word "culture" simply means tillage: agriculture involves all the processes of the culture or tillage of the ground; and selfculture means the tillage of the mind, in order that an intellectual crop may be the product-the tillage of the heart, so that a sweet, useful, and joyous life may result. This work, so grand and unlimited, is to be undertaken by self-by the individual-and by the individual to be carried on and completed. It is a mistake to suppose that only the poor-those deprived of the opportunities of intellectual development in schools

and colleges-need self-culture. Every human being, be his position in life what it may, will be undeveloped and uneducated unless there has been a process of selftraining. The youth whose education has been neglected, owing to the indisposition of parents or the necessities of devoting first capable years to labour, awakes to the fact that the world of knowledge is a closed and an unknown world, and that he is shut out from the exquisite pleasures enjoyed by those who know, who own or who are the possessors of knowledge. He learns also that he is to grow-because culture implies growth-into something which as yet he is not, something which is so far distant as to seem to be the unattainable. In the prospect of so much to learn without the assistance which Fortune's favourites have provided for them, no wonder that there should be at times a want of heart and hope, and that despondency should take the place of effort and patient continuous endeavour. Such a youth had need to be reminded that men have risen from the lowliest states to adorn the loftiest positions; and that masters in the arts and sciences, who have laid the world under obligation for all time, have started from the lowest strata of society, and by their own resolute will and unbending determination have won for themselves a name and a niche in the temple of Fame. Not that any number of "laborious days" and "sleepless nights" would enable the ordinary youth to attain eminence and distinction; diligence and perseverance, however, in the pursuit of knowledge, or in the prose

cution of any task, will earn for the self-instructor his own respect if he fail in the attainment of public distinction and honour. Every individual is capable of something which may not be available or attainable by any other; no two men are alike physically or mentally constituted. That which is attainable, and that which should be desired, is the development of the individual, not reproduction or imitation, which may be impossible.

If all the youths employed in the weaving-sheds in Lancashire were to resolve to imitate and emulate Dr. Isaac Milner because he was once a weaver, and that they like him would attain distinction as professors of mathematics and occupy the position of deans in the cathedrals, they would fail. They would not fail, however not one of them would fail-if they resolved to attain to the possession of knowledge and intellectual development; and from the ranks there might then come, as in the past, some bright and beautiful spirit, blessed with a mental capacity capable of enriching and adorning the various fields of art, literature, or science. The value of the example of those who were "born mud and died marble" is not so much in what they attained as how they attained it. They had strong and resolute determination coupled with patient endurance; they laboured persistently and continuously, and achieved the object of their desires because they would not fail. And just as they are in these respects imitated, so will progress be certain and success in moral and intellectual attainments secured.