EVIL OF MENTAL DISSIPATION. 73 impede their progress; but certain it is that more persons fail from a multiplicity of pursuits and pretensions than from an absolute lack of resources. It was the conviction of Don Quixote that he could have made very fine birdcages and toothpicks if his brain had not been so full of chivalrous ideas; and there are many to whom success in life would be easy if they were not distracted by rival ambitions. "The one prudence in life," says an essayist, "is concentration; the one evil is dissipation; and it makes no difference whether our dissipations are coarse or fine-property and its cares, friends and a social habit, or politics, or music, or feasting. Everything is good which takes away one plaything and delusion more, and drives us home to add one stroke of faithful work." To adapt the appropriate remarks of another writer, we may point out that the secret of failure is mental dissipation; the expenditure of our moral and intellectual energies on a distracting multiplicity of objects, instead of confining them to one leading pursuit. To do a thing perfectly, it is essential that an exclusiveness of attention should be bestowed upon it, as if, for the time, all other objects, if not worthless, were at least superfluous. "Just as the general who scatters his soldiers all about the country ensures defeat, so does he whose attention is for ever diffused through such innumerable channels that it can never gather in force on any one point. The human mind, in short, resembles a burningglass, whose rays are intense only as they are concentrated. As the glass burns only when its light is conveyed to the focal point, so the former illumines the world of science, literature, or business, only when it is directed to a solitary object. Or, to take another illustration, what is more powerless than the scattered clouds of steam as they rise in the sky? They are as impotent as the dewdrops that fall nightly upon the earth; but concentrated and condensed in a steam-boiler, they are able to cut through solid rock, to move mountains into the sea, and to bring the Antipodes to our doors." To sum up: Having fixed upon your aim in life, pursue it steadfastly and with all your might, allowing yourself to be turned aside neither to the right nor the left. CHAPTER IV. THE THREE P'S—PUNCTUALITY, PRUDENCe, and PERSEVERANCE. "Let us go forth, and resolutely dare, With sweat of brow, to toil our little day." -Lord Houghton. "To succeed, one must sometimes be very bold, and sometimes very prudent."-Napoleon. "Be firm; one constant element of luck Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck. Stick to your aim the mongrel's hold will slip, Small though he looks, the jaw that never yields "Time and patience change the mulberry leaf to satin."-Eastern Proverb. "Let every man be occupied, and occupied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done his best."-Sydney Smith. "Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds : In the trenches for the soldier; in the wakeful study For the scholar; in the furrows of the sea For men of that profession ;-of all which -Webster. E take it for granted that, on whatever vocation in life. the young man may finally determine, he will desire to be successful in it. And this from no mean motive, but because it is his duty to employ the talents with which God has intrusted him to the highest advantage. Now, success is possible only under certain conditions. You must observe the laws which govern events and direct the fortunes of men. If you seek to ascend a mountain, you are well aware that you must call into requisition certain physical and mental faculties. And so, if you would ripen into a great scholar, or become a merchant prince, or earn distinction as an engineer, or conquer fame as an artist, you must be prepared to bring all your powers into action. But you must also submit to the necessary training. It is not so much a question of talent as of morale, you see; and though it is a good thing to be clever, intelligent, sagacious, it is perhaps better to be industrious, patient, prudent. At all events, in profession or trade, there are three principles from which no man can diverge with impunity: the three P's-Punctuality, Prudence, and Perseverance. A firm adherence to these would save many a life from shipwreck; would often save the efforts of years from ultimate calamity. In "business" especially, that is, in commercial and trading transactions, caution, prudence, sagacity, and deliberation, are all described as necessary to success. Some men, it is true, get rich suddenly; but the majority do not and cannot storm the citadel of fortune, cannot carry it by a coup-de-main. Napoleon once said, "I have no idea of a merchant's acquiring a fortune as a general wins a battle-at a single blow." A fortune thus suddenly won is apt to vanish quite as suddenly. "The |