Lewistown gazette. [volume] (Lewistown, Pa.) 1843-1944, 1858-09-02

P'"' va ooSiS1 you W SuEHIouuG IneA
But to enable us to succeed in doing this
certain duties devolve upon you. We can
not succeed in promoting your advancement
without corresponding efforts on your part
and at the beginning of this, another session
1t behooves you to consider carefully acho,
those efforts are. Let us then enumerate
few of them
Ftrst-Your first effort will be to ascer-
tain what your object in going to school is.
Here many, very many students fail How
few indeed, have a clear idea of their OBJ
ject in attending school! Some go because
their parents desire it; others because their
position demands it, or it is fashionable, and
others again because they have no particu-
lar employment for few months, and think
their time better thus occupied than else
where
Most, if not all, such students fail to sat-
isfy either themselves or their friends. To
show the cause of this failure, it is only
necessary to state the well established fact
that to succeed in obtaining sound and
comprehensive mental, moral, and physi-
cal education, the student must unreserved-
| ly throw his whole mind and soul into his
efforts to pursue it. Home, company pleas
ure and loved ones must all be sacrificed
| for it. Self denial must be the student
daily companion. Weary hours of toll
must engage him, while others are enjoy
ing the real and imaginary pleasures of
life, or else he never will reach the top of
the hill upon which his aching eyes have
| been fixed
Let us turn to the light and trivial stu
dents of whom we are speaking, and ask,
will they make all these sacrifices With
out definite object in view, can they give
up all things to obtain it? They cannot,
they do not, and this is the cause of their
failure. Never will they drink deep from
the pure fount of knowledge. Shallow
draughts" must ever satisfy them, and they
must be content to wander about the base
of that mount, upon the top of which their
more noble brethren may be seen resting
their weary limbs, and basking in the sun
shine of royal favor.
| But few of another class, who have ex-
amincd carefully themselves and their fel-
low creatures, have discovered that the
mind, heart and body need careful, syste-
matte and continued training and cultiya-
ton.
These having ascertained what they want,
and having counted the cost, go to work
with self-sacrifeing spirit, ,oiU and an
energy that carry them through every diff
fculty, over every opposing obstacle
While the former are spending their time
in vain wishes for better opportunities, the
latter are using those they have. While
the one class is running from school to
school in search of better teachers, more
costly apparatus and examining processes for
rapidly filing their empty heads; the 9TH
er is making use of the teachers and appa-
ratus within their reach as helps, and slow
ly but surely filling their rapidly develop
ing minds and hearts with the products of
their own silent toll And to conclude the
contrast, when the first class shall have been
forgotten, or passed from this stage of ac-
ton into utter oblivion, the last will be the
dazzling stars upon which the world will
love to gaze, or having been peacefully
gathered to their final resting place, will
leave their praises to be sung by "millions
yet unborn"
And now let me ask, to which of these
classes do you, my young friends whom /
am addressing, belong? Time can tell
Second efort-The student having as
certained his Objects in going to school, and
having with selfsacrifcing spirit thrown
his entire energies into his efforts to obtain
those objects, in the second place, needs
continual efforts to guard himself from the
many enemies by which he is surrounded
!, The battle once begun, must never be re.
laxed until victory perches upon his ban,
ners. Ignorance is powerful enemy
and will fight you with many weapons, and
those we'll suited to overcome every means
of defence. The active and rapid student
; will be attacked by fatigue and exhaustion
the inactive and slow by sloth and short
sightedness; the daring and able by fatte
ry and selfexamination; the timid and
, weak by danger and despair.
Thus will every class of students be met