and fortune are not for all. True success lies in acting well your part, and this every one can do. Better be a first-rate hod-carrier than a second-rate anything.

The world has been very kind to many, who were once known as dunces or blockheads, after they have become very successful; but it was very cross to them while they were struggling through discouragement and misinterpretation. Such lives do not show, however, that a numskull is sure to climb to the top. Because the last boy in his class became the great Henry Ward Beecher, there is no reason to conclude that the last boy in the next class, or the next, must become anything great at all. There must be some life in the boy, or he will not rise under any circumstances until the day appointed for the resurrection of the dead. If he starts out in life as a failure, he will end as one, unless he gets thoroughly waked up in some way. Give every boy and girl a fair chance and reasonable encouragement, and do not condemn them because of even a large degree of downright stupidity; for many so-called goodfor-nothing boys, blockheads, numskulls, dullards, or dunces, were only boys out of their places, round boys forced into square holes.

"Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned," says Thackeray, "have a great tenderness and pity for the folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we have. I have always had a regard for dunces, those of my own school days were among the pleasantest of the fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest in life; whereas, many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by the yard, and construe Greek quite glibly, is no better than a feeble prig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before his beard grew."

George Stephenson, at twenty years of age, could neither read nor write, yet his name is inseparably linked with the introduction and development of railways.

Wellington was considered a dunce by his mother. At Eton he was called dull, idle, slow, and was about the last boy in school of whom anything was expected. He showed no talent, and had no desire to enter the army. His industry and perseverance were his only redeeming characteristics, in the eyes of his parents and teachers. But at forty-six he had defeated the greatest general living, except himself.

Goldsmith was the laughing-stock of his schoolmasters. He was graduated "Wooden Spoon," a college name for a dunce. He tried to enter a class in surgery, but was rejected. He was driven to literature. Dr. Johnson found him very poor and about to be arrested for debt. He made Goldsmith give him the manuscript of the "Vicar of Wakefield," sold it to the publishers, and paid the debt. This manuscript made its author famous.

John Harvard was called a boy of no promise, but he founded Harvard College, and became one of the real benefactors of the race.

Robert Clive bore the name of "dunce" and "reprobate" at school, but at thirty-two, with three thousand men, he defeated fifty thousand at Plassey and laid the foundation of the British Empire in India. Sir Walter Scott was called a blockhead by his teacher. When Byron happened to get ahead of his class, the master would say: "Now, Jordie, let me see how soon you will be at the foot again." Sheridan's mother tried in vain to teach him the most elementary studies. Her death aroused his slumbering talents, as has happened in hundreds of cases, and he became one of the most brilliant men of his age. Dr. Chalmers was expelled from St. Andrews school because of his stupidity.

Dr. Isaac Barrow was such a dullard that his father said, "If it is God's will to take any of my children by death, I hope it may be Isaac." "Why do you tell that blockhead the same thing twenty times over?" asked

John Wesley's father. "Because," replied his mother, "if I had told him but nineteen times, all my labor would have been lost, while now he will understand and remember."

Young Linnæus was called by his teachers almost a blockhead. Not finding him fit for the church, his parents sent him to college to study medicine. But the silent teacher within, greater and wiser than all others, led him to the fields; and neither sickness, misfortune, nor poverty could drive him from the study of botany, the choice of his heart, and he became the greatest botanist of his age.

David Drew was one of the dullest and most listless boys in his neighborhood, yet after an accident by which he nearly lost his life, and after the death of his brother, he became so studious and industrious that he could not bear to lose a moment. He read at every meal, using all the time he could get for self-improvement. He said that Paine's "Age of Reason" made him an author, for it was by his attempt to refute its arguments that he was first known as a strong, vigorous writer.

We live in a superficial age, and we hurry along in a happy-go-lucky way, ignorant or heedless of the capacities of our minds and bodies. The precocious youth, the boy or girl of average intelligence, or the dunce, should alike study his own strength, his weakness, his likes, his dislikes, his bent. "Know thyself," was spoken of old at Delphi; and, though the oracle has long been mute, the words are of eternal significance. No better advice was ever given to man. Philosophy finds its highest province in the study of our own natures. Knowledge thus gained, and that alone, will teach the round boy to avoid the square holes as he would shun falsehood and dishonor. It has been well said that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.

CHAPTER VI.

WHAT CAREER?

Brutes find out where their talents lie;
A bear will not attempt to fly,
A foundered horse will oft debate
Before he tries a five-barred gate.
A dog by instinct turns aside

Who sees the ditch too deep and wide.
But man we find the only creature
Who, led by folly, combats nature;
Who, when she loudly cries - forbear!
With obstinacy fixes there;

And where his genius least inclines,

Absurdly bends his whole designs.

SWIFT.

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs. -EMERSON.

And he who waits to have his task marked out,
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.

LOWELL.

Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing. - SYDNEY SMITH.

In the measure in which thou seekest to do thy duty shalt thou know what is in thee. But what is thy duty? The demand of the hour. GOETHE.

Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,

And so make life, death, and the vast forever, one grand, sweet song. CHARLES KINGSLEY.

"EVERY man has got a Fort," said Artemus Ward. "It's some men's fort to do one thing, and some other men's fort to do another, while there is numeris shiftless critters goin' round loose whose fort is not to do nothin.

"Twice I've endevered to do things which they was n't my Fort. The first time was when I undertook to lick a owdashus cuss who cut a hole in my tent and

krawld threw. Sez I, 'My jentle sir, go out, or I shall fall onto you putty hevy.' Sez he, 'Wade in, Old Wax Figgers,' whereupon I went for him, but he cawt me powerful on the hed and knockt me threw the tent into a cow pastur. He pursood the attack and flung me into a mud puddle. As I aroze and rung out my drencht garmints, I concluded fitin was n't my fort. I'le now rize the curtain upon seen 2nd. It is rarely seldum that I seek consolation in the Flowin Bole. But in a certain town in Injianny in the Faul of 18-, my orgin grinder got sick with the fever and died. I never felt so ashamed in my life, and I thought I'd hist in a few swallers of suthin strengthnin. Konsequents was, I histed so much I did n't zackly know whereabouts I was. I turned my livin wild beasts of Pray loose into the streets, and split all my wax-works. I then Bet I cood play hoss. So I hitched myself to a kanawl bote, there bein two other hosses behind and anuther ahead of me. But the hosses bein onused to such a arrangemunt, begun to kick and squeal and rair up. Konsequents was, I was kicked vilently in the stummuck and back, and presently, I found myself in the kanawl with the other hosses, kikin and yellin like a tribe of Cusscaroorus savajis. I was rescood, and as I was bein carried to the tavern on a hemlock bored I sed in a feeble voice, 'Boys, playin hoss is n't my Fort.'

"Moral: Never don't do nothin which is n't your Fort, for ef you do you'll find yourself splashin round in the kanawl, figgeratively speakin."

The following advertisement, which appeared day after day in a Western paper, did not bring a single reply:

"Wanted. Situation by a Practical Printer, who is competent to take charge of any department in a printing and publishing house. Would accept a profes sorship in any of the academies. Has no objection to teach ornamental painting and penmanship, geometry,