Year: 1875

1S0eL1 At sAc Aops
Tothe young men annually max
ing their entrance upon active life,
with great ambitions. conscious ca
paeities and high hopes, the prospect
| is, in ninety-nine cases in hundred,
most perplexing. They see every
avenue to prosperity thronged with
their superlors in experience, in so-
cial advantages, and in the posses
sion of all the elements and eondi-
tion of success. Every post is occu
pied, every Office filled, every path
crowded. Where shall they find
room? 1t is related of Mr.. Webster
that when a young lawyer suggested
to him that the profession to which
he had devoted himself was over
crowded, the great man replied:
young man, there is always room at
the top" Never was wiser or more
suggestive word said. There IN
doubtedly is always room enough
where excellence lives. Mr.. Web
ster was not troubled for lack OF
room. Mr.. Clay and Calhoun were
never crowded. Mr.. Evarts, Mr..
Gushing, and Mr.. O'COnor have
plenty of space around them. Mr..
Beecher, DR.. StOrrs, DIR. Hall, Mr..
Phillips Brooks would never know.
in their personal experience, that it
was hard to obtain desirable minis
terial charge. The profession is not
crowded where they are. Dir. Brown
SequarJi, =. Willard Parisery=Br.
Hammond, are not troubled for space
for their elbows. When Nelation
died in Paris, he died like Moses on
a mountain. When Won Graefe died
in Berlin, he had no neighhOr 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 nothing will do them so
much good as a struggle which
teaches them exactly what there is
in them, educates them gradually to
its use, instructs them in personal
economy, drills them into Il patient
and persistent habit of work, and
keeps them at the foot of the ladder
until they become strong enough to
hold every step they are enabled to
gain. The first years of every mans
business or professional life are years
of education. They are intended to
be, in the order of nature and PrOvi-
dence. Doors do not open to a man
until he is prepared to enter them.
The man without wedding gar
ment may get in surreptititiously,
but he Immediately goes out with a
flee in his ear. We think it is the eX-
perience of 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 higher place has swung
back of itself, and they have heard
the call to enter. The old die, or
voluntarily retire for rest. The best
men who stand ready to take their
place will succeed to their position
and its honOrs and emoluments.


The young men will say that only
few can reach the f5p. That is
true, but it is also true .eAats the fur
ther from the bottom onesgoes, the
more scattering the neighborhood
One can fancy. for illustration, that
every profession and every calling is
pyramidal in its living constituency,
and that only one man is at the top,
there 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 quick that they pick the
meat out of one another's teeth to
keep them from starving. If man
has no power to get out of the rab-
BILE at the bottom, then he is self-cOn-
victed of having chosen calling or
profession to whose duties he has no
adaptation.


The grand mistake that youngmen
make, during the first ten years of
their business and professional life,
is in idly waiting for their chance.
They seem to forget, or they do not
know, that during those ten years
they enjoy the only leisure they will
ever have. After ten years in the
natural course of things, they will be
absorbingly busy. There will then
be no time for reading, culture and
study. If they do not become
thoroughly grounded in the princi-
Piles and practical details of their pro


fession 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 lawyer:


who sit idly in their offices, and
smoke and lounge away the time


"waiting for something to turn up,
are by that course fastening them
selves for life to the lower stratum
t,,boro thar otrunUla for n hara Evali