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True merit is like a river, the deeper it is the less noise it makes. – Halifax.

You hope, and perchance believe, no doubt, that when you have a full opportunity to show the world what sort of timber you are made of that it will look upon you as being a “genius.” Almost every boy cherishes some such aspiration. And why not? Such a trend of thought is to be encouraged. It is proper and commendable. We would all be geniuses if we could.

We know what we are, but not what we may be. – Shakespeare.

The world admires a genius. If he is the genuine article it seeks his autograph, prints his picture in books and newspapers, and when he passes away it is likely to build a monument over his remains.

Vacillation is the prominent feature of weakness of character. – Voltaire.

And can we all be geniuses? Some say we can and some say we cannot, quite. Some say geniuses are born and some say they are self-made.

When Mr. Edison, the famous electrician and inventor, was asked for his definition of genius he answered: “Two per cent is genius and ninety-eight per cent is hard work.” On another occasion when asked: “Mr. Edison, don’t you believe that genius is inspiration?” he replied, “No! genius is perspiration.”

Conduct is three-fourths of life. – Emerson.

This definition of genius quite agrees with that given by the American statesman, Alexander Hamilton, who said: “All the genius I have lies in just this: When I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings; my mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make the people are pleased to call genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.”

We must not yield to difficulties, but strive the harder to overcome them. – Robert E. Lee.

Helvetius, the famous French philosopher, says: “Genius is nothing but a continued attention,” and Buffon tells us that “genius is only a protracted patience.”

Through every clause and part of speech of a right book, I meet the eyes of the most determined men. – Emerson.

Turner, the great landscape painter, when asked how he had achieved his great success, replied: “I have no secret but hard work. This is a secret that many never learn, and they do not succeed because they do not learn it. Labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty.”

All your Greek will never advance you from secretary to envoy, or from envoy to ambassador; but your address, your air, your manner, if good, may. – Chesterfield.

“The man who succeeds above his fellows,” says Lord Lytton, “is the one who early in life clearly discerns his object and toward that object habitually directs his powers. Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.”

“Am I a genius?”

’Tis the mind that makes the body rich. – Shakespeare.

Now that you have asked the question, why not carefully think it over and determine what the answer should be? Have you patience and determination? Are you cultivating the habit of sticking to it?

STICK TO IT

To read without reflection is like eating without digesting. – Burke.

I learnt that nothing can constitute good breeding that has not good nature for its foundation. – Bulwer.

To acquire a few tongues, says a French writer, is the task of a few years; but to be eloquent in one is the labor of a life. – Colton.

Genius has a twin brother whose name is Patience. The one is quite often mistaken for the other, which is not strange since they resemble each other so closely their most intimate friends can scarcely tell them apart. These two brothers usually work together, which enables the world to tell who and what they are, for whenever either of them is employed singly and alone he is hardly ever recognized.

To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance. – Bishop Taylor.

One of these brothers plants the tree and the other cares for it until the fruit is finally matured. The tree which Genius plants would never amount to much if Patience were to grow tired of watering and caring for it. There are weeds to be kept down, branches to be pruned, the soil must be looked after, worms’-nests must be destroyed, and many things must be done before the fruit is ready to harvest.

Life is not so short but that there is always room enough for courtesy. – Emerson.

If Patience were to refuse to work at any time the whole undertaking would prove a failure. But he does not. He performs his plain, simple duty, day after day, year after year, until, after long waiting, there is the beautiful fruit at last. It looks very pretty, but it is not yet quite ripe. Pick it too soon and it will shrivel up and lack flavor. But Patience has learned to wait until the day and the hour of perfection is at hand, and lo! there is his great reward!

A man’s own good breeding is the best security against other people’s ill manners. – Chesterfield.

The people say: “See this wonderful fruit that grew on the tree which Genius planted!” But Genius, who is wiser than the multitude, says, “See this wonderful fruit that grew on the tree which Patience tended!”

Common sense bows to the inevitable and makes use of it. – Wendell Phillips.

Patience and perseverance are the qualities that enable one to work out his problems in school and his larger problems in the big university of the busy world.

Above all things, reverence yourself. – Pythagoras.

It has been very truly said that if we will pick up a grain a day and add to our heap we shall soon learn by happy experience the power of littles as applied to intellectual processes and possessions.

To Adam, Paradise was home; to the good among his descendants, home is Paradise. – Hare.

The road to success, says one of the world’s philosophers, is not to be run upon by seven-league boots. Step by step, little by little, bit by bit; that is the way to wealth, that is the way to wisdom, that is the way to glory. The man who is most likely to achieve success in life is the one who when a boy learns to

KEEP PEGGING AWAY

To give happiness is to deserve happiness. – Rosseau.

Self-respect, – that corner-stone of all virtues. – John Herschel.

This, then, is a proof of a well-trained mind, to delight in what is good, and to be annoyed at the opposite. – Cicero.

The Chinese tell of one of their countrymen, a student, who, disheartened by the difficulties in his way, threw down his book in despair, when, seeing a woman rubbing a crowbar on a stone, he inquired the reason, and was told that she wanted a needle, and thought she would rub down the crowbar till she got it small enough. Provoked by this example of patience to “try again,” he resumed his studies, and became one of the foremost scholars of the empire.

There never was so much room for the best as there is to-day. – Thayer.

After more than ten years of wandering through the unexplored depths of the primeval forests of America in the study of birds and animals, Audubon determined to publish the results of his painstaking energy. He went to Philadelphia with a portfolio of two hundred sheets, filled with colored delineations of about one thousand birds, drawn life-size. Being obliged to leave the city before making final arrangements as to their disposition, he placed his drawings in the warehouse of a friend. On his return in a few weeks he found to his utter dismay that the precious fruits of his wanderings had been utterly destroyed by rats. The shock threw him into a fever of several weeks’ duration, but with returning health his native energy came back, and taking up his gun and game-bag, his pencils and drawing-book, he went forward to the forests as gaily as if nothing had happened. He set to work again, pleased with the thought that he might now make better drawings than he had done before, and in three years his portfolio was refilled.

A healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of life. – Jean Ingelow.

A laugh is worth a hundred groans in any market. – Lamb.

There is no real life but cheerful life. – Addison.

When Carlyle had finished the first volume of his “French Revolution” he lent the manuscript to a friend to read. A maid, finding what she supposed to be a bundle of waste paper on the parlor floor used it to light the kitchen fire. Without spending any time in uttering lamentations, the author set to work and triumphantly reproduced the book in the form in which it now appears.

A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone. – Thoreau.

There is one thing in this world better than making a living, and that is making a life. – Russell.

“How hard I worked at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvement appertaining to it! I will only add to what I have already written of perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong point of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success.” Such is Charles Dickens’s testimony to the value of sticking to it.

A man must be one of two things; either a reed shaken by the wind, or a wind to shake the reeds. – Handford.

One of the clever characters created by the pen of George Horace Lorimer says: “Life isn’t a spurt, but a long, steady climb. You can’t run far up hill without stopping to sit down. Some men do a day’s work, and then spend six lolling around admiring it. They rush at a thing with a whoop and use up all their wind in that. And when they’ve rested and got it back, they whoop again and start off in a new direction.”

There is nothing at all in life except what we put there. – Madame Swetchine.

Says the poet, James Whitcomb Riley, “For twenty years I tried to get into one magazine; back came my manuscripts eternally. I kept on. In the twentieth year that magazine accepted one of my articles.”

He is, in my opinion, the noblest who has raised himself by his own merit to a higher station. – Cicero.

The eminent essayist, William Mathews, tells us: “The restless, uneasy, discontented spirit which sends a mechanic from the East to the South, the Rocky Mountains, or California, renders continuous application anywhere irksome to him, and so he goes wandering about the world, a half-civilized Arab, getting the confidence of nobody, and almost sure to die insolvent.”

A page digested is better than a volume hurriedly read. – Macaulay.

The boys who stick to it, and the men who stick to it, are the ones who achieve results. It does not pay to scatter one’s energies. If a man cannot succeed at one thing he is even less likely to succeed at many things. Just here would be a good place, I think, to tell how Johnny’s father taught him

THE SECRET OF SUCCESS

He that can have patience can have what he will. – Franklin.

Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself. – Plato.

A man who dares waste an hour of time has not discovered the value of time. – Darwin.