Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/19

 filled with the thoughts of the friends they were leaving behind; they would have been something less than human if they had not thought occasionally of the danger ahead; but whatever they thought or felt there was fight in their eyes, and they marched straight ahead, to the accomplishment of their tasks.

It is with that sort of spirit that the freshman should go to his work. Every day will have its special tasks; these should be done and done within the time assigned for them. He will not always find them easy or pleasant. The soldiers that I saw were carrying guns that, no doubt, galled their shoulders, and heavy knapsacks that seemed like an Old Man of the Sea about their necks; their feet were often blistered and sore, but they marched on; the day's work had to be done.

A young man said to me not long ago in explaining his failures of last year: "My work was very difficult, and I could not get interested in it, so I shirked it." Such a man would make a poor soldier, just as he