Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/366

358 freshman and with the university of life for his next place of struggle, of aspiration and of achievement. He enters upon a new training by different methods and through radically different experiences. He is trained indeed but by no sympathetic and systematic teachers. He must find his own way to knowledge, and to wisdom which is greater than knowledge, and must struggle onward and upward with not only little assistance, but even with almost every man's hand against him and driven, at times, to raise his hand against every man except the select few whose interests or whose convictions coincide with his own and are opposed by all the world beside. But this is not difficult for the man who knows himself in the right. In all men, it is obvious to the close observer, there exists a fighting instinct which has its use in life and the joy of contest makes easier the struggle for the intended goal.

Honesty, ability, capacity and power, supplemented by precisely the right sort of learning and made available through systematic training, in every case prove winning quantities. The complete development of the man to a maximum of usefulness in the vocation and the life to which he is by nature best fitted, means progress and ultimate success—provided he can keep himself in training. An essential element of the art of success is that of living long enough and in a state of high working efficiency. The fact that this is so generally ignored makes the opportunity of the man who never forgets it all the larger.

It is also the fact that it must be admitted that the incapacity, the lack of integrity, the indifference to duty and the general inefficiency of the average man is one of the elements of the success of the man who does finally succeed. But, sad as is the fact, it may fairly be accepted by the man who is at once gentleman and scholar and expert, as contributing to his opportunity.

And now, at this period of blossoms and nature's most beautiful season of promise and of hope, our young men and our young women are going out from the colleges to meet their opportunities. In these early days of the twentieth century, the college-man is the man of the century as never before, and the college-woman is, as never before, his most efficient helpmeet. All paths open to them and all fields are theirs for cultivation and 'all sorts and conditions of men' look to them for leadership and guidance. Theirs it is to prepare for leadership of every industrial army, for conquest of every unknown kingdom in nature's as yet unexplored realms, for discovery of uncounted secrets of the mysterious workings of physical law, of sources of energy and of new methods of utilizing all forces and all substances. These are they who shall become generals in the industrial armies, expounders of law, presidents, capitalists, benefactors of humanity.

For every one, if he will but seek it, there lies ahead a career as full of accomplishment, of honor, of usefulness to the world as his best