monly lacking in, and which can never be so cheaply acquired as in boyhood.

Remember that a man is valuable in our day for what he knows, and that his company will always be desired by others in exact proportion to the amount of intelligence and instruction he brings with him. I assure you that one of the earliest pieces of definite knowledge we acquire after we have become men is this that our company will be desired no longer than we honestly pay our proper share in the general reckoning of mutual entertainment.

A man who knows more than another knows incalculably more, be sure of that, and a person with eyes in his head can not look even into a pigsty without learning something that will be useful to him at one time or another. Not that we should educate ourselves for the mere selfish sake of that advantage of superiority which it will give us. But knowledge is power in this noblest sense, that it enables us to benefit others and to pay our way honorably in life by being of use.

Now, when you are at school in Boston you are furnishing your brain with what can be obtained from books. You are training and enriching your intellect. While you are in the country you should remember that you are in the great school of the senses. Train your eyes and ears. Learn to know all the trees by their bark and leaves, by their general shape and manner of growth. Sometimes you can be able to say positively what a tree is not by simply examining the lichens on the bark, for you will find that particular varieties of lichen love particular trees. Learn also to know all the birds by sight, by their notes, by their manner of flying; all the animals by their general appearance and gait or the localities they frequent.

You would be ashamed not to know the name and use of every piece of furniture in the house, and we ought to be as

--

familiar with every object in the world which is only a larger kind of house. You recollect the pretty story of Pizarro and the Peruvian Inca: how the Inca asked one of the Spaniards to write the word Dios (God) upon his thumb nail, and then, showing it to the rest, found only Pizarro unable to read it! Well, you will find as you grow older that this same name of God is written all over the world in little phenomena that occur under our eyes every moment, and I confess that I feel very much inclined to hang my head with Pizarro when I cannot translate these hieroglyphics into my own vernacular.

Now, I write all this to you, my dear Charlie, not in the least because it is considered proper for uncles to bore their nephews with musty moralities and advice; but I should be quite willing that you should think me a bore if I could only be the means of impressing upon you the importance of observing, and the great fact that we cannot properly observe till we have learned how. Education, practice, and especially a determination not to be satisfied with remarking that side of an object which happens to catch our eye first when we first see itthese gradually make an observer. The faculty, once acquired, becomes at length another sense which works mechanically.

I think I have sometimes noticed in you an impatience of mind which you should guard against carefully. Pin this maxim up in your memory that Nature abhors the credit system, and that we never get anything in life till we have paid for it. Anything good, I mean; evil things we always pay for afterwards, and always when we find it hardest to do it. By paying for them, of course, I mean laboring for them.

Tell me how much good solid work a young man has in him, and I will erect a horoscope for him as accurate as Guy Mannering's for young Bertram. Talents are absolutely nothing to a man except he have the faculty of work along with them. They, in fact, turn upon him and worry him, as Acteon's dogs did you remember the story? Patience and perseverance these are the sails and the rudder even of genius, without which it is only a wretched hulk upon the waters.

It is not fair to look a gift horse in the mouth, unless, indeed, it be a wooden horse, like that which carried the Greeks into Troy; but my lecture on patience and finish was apropos of your letter, which was more careless in its chirography and (here and there) in its composition than I liked. Always make a thing as good as you can. Otherwise it was an excellent letter, because it told what you had seen and what you were doing certainly better as a letter than this of mine, which is rather a sermon. But read it, my dear Charlie, as the advice of one who takes a sincere interest in you. I hope to hear from you again, and my answer to your next shall be more entertaining.

I remain your loving uncle,

ALADDIN

WHEN I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp;

J. R. LOWELL.

When I could not sleep for the cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And builded, with roofs of gold,
My beautiful castles in Spain!

Since then I have toiled day and night,
I have money and power good store,
But I'd give all my lamps of silver bright
For the one that is mine no more;
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose,
You gave, and may snatch again;
I have nothing 't would pain me to lose,
For I own no more castles in Spain!

HOE TO THE END OF YOUR ROW

Too many people are satisfied if they have done a thing "well enough." That is a fatal complacency. has cursed souls. "Well enough" has wrecked business enter"Well enough" prises. "Well enough" has destroyed nations. If perfection in a task can possibly be reached, nothing short of perfection

is "well enough."

Governor Talbot of Massachusetts got his high office because General Swift made a happy application of the truth, in saying to the convention: "I nominate for governor of this state a man who, when he was a farmer's boy, hoed to the end of the row." That saying became a campaign slogan all up and down the state. "He hoed to the end of the row! He hoed to the end of the row!" When the people discovered that

this was one of the characteristics of the man, they elected him by one of the greatest majorities ever given a governor in Massachussetts.

Yet we must bear in mind that there is such a thing as overdoing anything. Young people should draw a line between study that secures wisdom and study that breaks down the mind; between exercise that is healthful and exercise that is injurious; between a conscientiousness that is pure and divine and a conscientiousness that is over-morbid and insane; between economy that is careful and economy that is stingy; between industry that is a reasonable use of their powers and industry that is an overuse of their powers, leading only to destruction.

The best ordered mind is one that can grasp the problems that gather around a man constantly and work them out to a logical conclusion; that seeks quickly what anything means, whether it be an exhibition of goods, a juxtaposition of events, or the suggestion of literature.

A man is made up largely of his daily observations. School training serves to fit and discipline him so that he may read rightly the lesson of the things he sees around him. Men have made 'mighty fortunes by just using their eyes.

Several years ago I had dinner in New York with one of the great millionaires of that city. In the course of our talk he told me something of his boyhood days-how with hardly a penny in his pocket he slung a pack on his back and set out along the Erie Canal looking for a job. At last he got one. He was paid three dollars a week to make soft soap for the laborers to use at the locks in washing their hands. One can hardly imagine a more humble occupation: but this boy