Choice Selections

CHOICE SELECTIONS.

A Mistake in Farming. My greatest mistake in farming has been in going into debt. When I began, I was not satisfied to go slow and only buy such things as I could pay for, but began by borrowing money and buy- ing what I could have done without. Neighbors were mostly older than myself and had their farms improved, and machinery with which to do their work, and naturally I did not like to do without: besides, I wanted my house well furnished and family dressed like their associates. Before I realized it, I was so deeply in debt that the only way out was to call a halt anddo business on a different basis. I determined to buy only what I could pay for on the spot, and although it took much self-denial, I soon found I was able to live and in a slow way gradually pay off the old debts. I have now paid the last one, and am determined under no circumstances whatever to again go in debt. My advice to all young men is pay as you go, even if you have to go slow.-A writer in Farm and Home.

Napoleon's Estimate. When Napoleon was waiting, in exile, forhis rapidly approach- ing death, he is said to have uttered the following opinions on the earthly virtues and the heavenly as they have appeared in history. He said: "I have been accustomed to put before me the examples of Alexander and Cæsar, with the hope of rivaling their exploits and living in the minds of men forever. Yet after all, in what sense do Cæsar and Alexander live ? Who knows or cares anything about them ? Even their names do but flit up and down the world

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like ghosts, mentioned only on particular occasions or from acci- dental associations. "Their chief home is the schoolroom; they have a foremost place inboys' grammars and exercise books; they are splendid examples for themes; they form writing copies. So low is Alex- ander fallen, so low is imperial Cæsar. "But, on the contrary, there is just one name in the whole world that lives. It is the name of one who passed his years in obscurity, and who died a malefactor's death. Eighteen hundred years have gone since that time, but still that name has its hold upon the human mind. It has possessed the world, and it main- tainspossession. "Here, then, is one who is not a mere name. He is no empty fiction. He is a substance. He is dead and gone, but still he lives as the energetic thought of successive generations, and as the awful motive power of a thousand great events. Jesus Christ has done without effort what others with lifelong heroic struggles have not done. Can he be less than divine?"-Youth's Companion.

A Fortune may Prove a Curse. Neither the money-maker nor the money-saver is necessarily successful. A fortune, however great, in the hands of a man who lacks education, culture and refinement may prove a curse rather than a blessing. The man who has developed his brain into a great money-making gland, who has stifled and dwarfed all his finer instincts and sensibilities, who has not developed the manly side of his nature, who has not cultivated a love for the beautiful, a taste for the good and the true, has simply developed the coarser, the material side of his being; he has catered to the brute within him, not to the higher man. Many of our so-called successful men have cultivated but one set of faculties-the money-getting, the grasping qualities, the brute instincts which lead men to take advantage of the weak- nesses of others. They have developed the woody fibre of their natures, but have made no effort to bring out the flower, the fruit- age, the higher attributes of their being. Their social instincts have become atrophied from disuse, so that many millionaires who would be considered giants on 'change are mere dwarfs, utter non-

32 IMPROVEMENT ERA.

entities in society. In other words, the grasping, overreaching faculties have been developed to such an unusual extent that they have overridden and crushed out all that is finest and noblest in their possessor's nature. And yet those monstrosities, those men who have spent a lifetime in cultivating the brute qualities, are often held up to youth as success models ! They are no more real men than an oak with one enormously developed branch is a real oak.-J. Lincoln Brooks .

Let the Sunlight in. A plant which a poor city girl brought to a flower-show took a prize, and people who knew in what a wretched, sunless, attic she lived, expressed surprise that she could grow so beautiful a plant in such a place. "Oh," she replied, "a little sunlight comes into the alley every day, and I kept changing my plant to get as much of it as possible. That is what made it beautiful." There is a great lesson for us in this little story. We may be surrounded by the most forbidding environment, and yet we can manage, in some way, to get sunlight enough to brighten life.

Getting Hold of Oneself. Very few ever get full command of their energies. Most people get their living by their weakness rather than by their strength. They never seem to utilize more than a fraction of themselves. They use only a part of their faculties. Their power is potential, not real. They remain undeveloped possibilities. Only one side of their nature has been unfolded. To have the power to fling oneself unreservedly upon what- ever one does; to be, as Goethe said, a whole man to everything one touches, to be able to throw, not a quarter, not a half, but one's entire weight upon the task in hand; this is the great secret of success .

To get complete possession of yourself, absolute mastery of your faculties, to seize your life-purpose with the whole of your being and fling your life out to it; this is to succeed, indeed. To feel the thrill which comes with the consciousness of complete self-mastery: this is life raised to its highest standard.

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One who is out of his place cannot get possession of himself. He must fill the niche which Nature made for him, or he will be a failure. He must feel the whole of himself, all of his faculties, his entire being, tugging away at his life-aim, if he would make the most possible of himself. A man whom nature cut out for a statesman will be a failure on the farm. One patterned for a shoemaker will still cobble, though he be in Congress. One trouble with most of us is, that we seek for power out- side of ourselves; we think we can absorb it from books, from a teacher, from a school, auniversity; but the creative energy which accomplishes things, the original, vitalizing force of achievement, must ever come from within. It cannot be found in books or in colleges; it cannot be put into us from without; it must be evolved from within. Borrowed power never accomplishes anything; it is the manwho gets a firm grip on all his powers, impelling them as by a coiled spring within himself, that is ever the master of the situation, and accomplishes grand results.-Success.

GOING OUT AND COMING IN.

In that home was joy and sorrow Where an infant first drew breath, While an aged sire was drawing Near unto the gate of death. His feeble pulse was failing, And his eye was growing dim; He was standing on the threshold, When they brought the babe to him.

While to murmur forth a blessing On the little one he tried, In his trembling arms he raised it, Pressed it to his lips and died.