Great is wisdom;

infinite is the value of wisdom. It cannot

be exaggerated; it is the highest achievement of man.-CAR

LYLE.

With any grass that I can get to harvest here and

now.

The 'yender grass' that 'way ahead is wavin' in its pride

I find ain't very fillin' by the time it's cut and

dried.

Hope springs eternal, so they say, within the human breast:

Man never is, the sayin' goes, but always to be,

blest.

So my advice is, Don't you let your present chances

pass,

A-thinkin' by and by you'll reap your fill of 'yender grass.''

CHAPTER VIII

"TRIFLES "

"TRIFLES make perfection, but per

fection is no trifle." The saying

is old but the truth is ever new.

It is the little things that count, day by day, in the forming of character. The way in which we employ our moments finally becomes the way in which we employ our years.

As a matter of course every boy will, if he can, do some big, beautiful thing out there in the years to come. But it is a foregone conclusion that every boy must do a vast number of little things before he shall do the larger things. The "trifles" are always at hand waiting to be done, day after day, year after year. And it is the way in which a boy does these little things that gives him the standing he holds in the estimation of those with whom he is intimately associated.

"As the twig is bent, the tree's in

ΙΟΙ

It is ours to climb and dare.-FREDERICK LAWRENCE KNOWLES.

Oh, sweet is life when youth is in the blood. - DENIS MCCARTHY.

Down in the busy thoroughfares are boys the world shall know some day. SAMUEL ELLSWORTH KISER.

To him who presses on, at each degree new visions rise. JULIA WARD HOWE.

To doubt is failure, and to dare, success. - FREDERICK LAWRENCE KNOWLES.

It's nothing against you to fall down flat, but to lie there is disgrace. EDMUND VANCE COOKE.

clined." A habit is easy to form but hard to break. Yet the strongest of habits are formed just a little at a time—a small strand is added each day until there is a mighty cable that cannot be broken except by a mighty effort. If it is a good habit, its strength makes it all the better! If it is a bad habit, its strength makes it so much the worse.

Where is the boy who cannot see the fallacy in such illogical reasoning as this: "Now, I will be careless while I am young so that I may be careful when I am older. I will remain ignorant and poorly informed while I am a boy, so that I may be wise when I am a man. I will bend one way while I am a twig so that I shall incline in another direction when I become a tree. I will do wrong things while my character is being formed so that I may do right things when my habits become fixed." All such reasoning is very, very foolish, isn't it? And yet there are some illogical youths who deem it will be easy to have one character and disposition as boys and quite a different one when they come to be men. By some strange hocus-pocus they hope to be able to sow a crop of "wild oats" and later on reap