The commonwealth. (Scotland Neck, N.C.) 1896-1929, 1908-10-22
"Rapid, Intense, Sustained"
(Success Magazine.l

| that 1t helps US TO CLIP Cne corners,
| to take short cuts in our methods of
doing things; we learn to focus the
mind and to hold it upon one thing
continuously and vigorously. The
college-trained young man or woman
ought to accomplish great deal
more than one who has not had these
four years of mental training and
discipline.
We often hear people say that it is
pity to spend the four most valua-
BILE years Of ones ,ife in college; but
there are innumerable instances of
men who have so trained their minds
that they have been able to accom-
plish more in a single year after
leaving college than they could have
in two or three years without the
training, so that they have actually
saved time by the discipline which
has enabled them to work intensely
and continuously.
Prident Eliot once said to the Har-
ward students; "You ought to obtain
here the trained capacity for mental
labor, rapid, intense, and sustained.
1t is the main achievement of college
life to win this mental force, this
|capacity for keen observation, just
inference and sustained forethought,
and everything that we mean by the
reasoning power of man. That ca
pacity will be the main source of
intellectual joys and happiness and
content throughout a long, busy
life.
President Eliot always emphasizes
the possibility of the acquired power
of intense, sustained intellectual
labor in college, and he claims that
the capacity for hard work, intense
and sustained, is one of the principal
lobjects Of college education.
Everywhere we see young men
with splendid natural ability, but
, working with great loss of power
because they never had continuous
training in nd-concentration, in
sustained effort. They work in a
desultory, helter-skelter way. They
cannot hold the mind continuously
upon one subject, which is really the
secret of great mental power.
There is a tremendous force in
mental intensity. In approaching a
task with that strong determination
which breaks a way through all diff
culties.
wish it were possible to convince e
young people who can not go to col
+ lege of the untold advantage to them
r. of putting themselves under syste-
matte, continuous training of self
Improvement. 1t would not be ex.
pensive for several to join together
and hire a tutor to aid their efforts
and to plan their reading and study
1 in special lines, to be taken up one
after another until they acquire {
= substantial substitute for collegt
: education. 1t is astonishing how
quickly this can be done.
: Everywhere we find young peopl
4 regretting that they could not go t.
q college; yet they have unconsciousl.
4 wasted enough time in frivolou
% amusement, in doing foolish thing
in odds and ends of time and half
holidays, to give them splendi
J. self-education, which is the best kin
of an education.
u | know a man filling high pos
:, ton who has so completely educate
}: himself through home-study an
d by the aid of correspondence school:
IS that no one would ever know he ha
" not been to college. Not one collee
j. graduate in thousand is so tho
a oughly educated as he. He has dor
= it by himself, mostly in his spar
time. Why can not you do it?
K despite all your wealth." sal
- the Cynic, "your very name will