Year: 1874

To the young men annually making
their entrance upon active life, with
great ambitious, conscious capacities
and high hopes, the prospect is, in
ninetv-nine cases in hundred, most
perplexing. They see every avenue
to prosperity thronged with their
superiors in experience, in social ad
vantages, and in the possession of all
the elements and conditions of sue
cess. Every post is occupied, every
office filed, every path crowded.
Where shall they find room. 1t is
related of Mr.. Webster that when
young lawyer suggested to him that
the profession to which he had de-
voted himself was overcrowded, the
great man replied: "Young man.
there is always room enough at the
top Never was wiser or more
suggestive word said. There uG-
doubtedly is always room enough
where excellence lives. Mr.. Webster
was not troubled for lack of ROOM
Mr.. Clay and Mr.. Calhoun were new
er crowded. Mr.. Evarts, Mr.. Cush-
ing, and Mr.. O'Connor have plenty of
space around them. Mr.. Beecher, DR..
Storrs, DIR. Hall, Mr.. Phillip Brooks
would never know, in their personal
experience, that it was hard to obtain
a desirable ministerial charge. The
profession is not crowded where they
are. DIR. Brown-Sequard, DIR. Will
lard Parker, DIR. Hammond. are not
troubled for space for their elbows
When Nclaton died in Paris, he died
like Moses, on mountain. When
Won Graefe died in Berlin, he had no
neighbor at his altitude.


1t is well, first, that all young men
remember that nothing will do them
so much injury as quick and easy
success, and that nothing will do
them SO much good as struggle
which teaches them exactly what
there is in them, educates them grad
ually To its use, instructs them in per
sonal economy, drills them into pa
tient and persistent habit of work,
and keeps them at the foot of the
lander until they become strong en-
ough to hold every step they are en-
abled to gain. The first years of ev-
cry mans business or professional life
are years Of education. They are in
tended to be, in the order of nature
and Providence. Doors do not open
to man until he is prepared to enter
them. The man without wedding
garment may get in surreptitiously,
but he Immediately goes ont with a
flea in his ear. We think it is the
experience of most successful men
who have watched the course of their


lives in retrospect, that whenever
| they have arrived at a point where
they were thoroughly prepared to go
up higher, the door to a higher place
has swung back Of itself, and they
have heard the calleto enter. The
best men who and ready to take
their places will succeed to their po-
si,ion and its honors and emoluments.
| The Young men will say that only
few can reach the top. That is true,
but it is also true that the further
from the bottom one goes, the more
scattering the neighborhood, One
can fancy, for illustration, that every
profession and every ealing is pyra-
midal in its living constituency, and
that while only one man is at the top
their are several tiers of men below
him who have plenty of elbow room,
and that it is only at the base that
men are so thick that they pick the
meat out of one anothers teeth to
keep them from starving. If man
has no power to get out of the rabble
at the bottom, then he is self-convict.
ed of having chosen calling or pro-
fession to whose duties he has no
adaptation.


The grand mistake that young men
make, during the first ten years Of
their business and professional life, is
sn idly waiting for their chance. They
seem to forget. or they do not know,
that during those ten years they en-
JOY the only leisure they will ever
have. Aften ten years, in the natur-
al course Of things, they will be alb
sorbinely busy. There will then be
no time for reading, culture, and
study. II they do not become
thoroughly grounded in the princi-
plies and practical details of their pro-
tession during those years; if they do
not store their minds with useful
knowledge: if they do not pursue
habits of reading and observation, and
| social intercourse, which result in
culture, the question whether they
| will ever rise to occupy place where
! there is room enough for them will be
/ decided in the negative. The young
physicians and young lawyers who
sit Idly in their offices, and smoke
and lounge away the time waiting
for something to turn up are by
that conrse fastening themselves for
life to the lower stratum, where their
struggle for y bare livelihood is to
be perpetual. The first ten years are
golden years, that should be filled
with systematic reading and observa-
ton. Everything that tends to pro-
fessional and personal excellence
should be an object Of daily pursuit.
To such men the doors Of success
open of themselves at last. Work
seeks the best hands, as naturally as
water runs down hill; and il never
seeks the hands OF trfler, or of ono
whose only recommendation for word
is that he needs it. Young men do
not know very much any way, and
the time always comes to those who
become worthy, when they look back
with wonder upon their early good
opinion OF their requirements and
themselves. ...


There is another point that ought
not TO be overlooked in the treatment
, of this s;lbjsct. Young men lock
about them and see q gToa. measure
of worldly success awarded to men
without principle. They see the
trickster crowned with public honors,
they see the swindler rolling in
wealth, they see the sharp man, the
oyerreaching man, the unprincipled
man, the liar, the demagogue, the
time-seryer, the trimmer, the