knowledge-is, undoubtedly, a powerful factor in human affairs, and happy is the man who possesses it. Knowledge is no longer a steep which few may climb; the opportunities for acquiring it are now so many and so various that to be ignorant is quite unpardonable. It has been truly said that experience keeps a dear school, but it is the only one fools will attend. Happy is the man who is always prepared to avail himself of the experience of others."

There is a man in London now making an income running into well over ten thousand pounds. a year. Only a few years ago he was an obscure clerk. One day he said: "It is no use trying to do just the same work as other people; I must do more." He started taking work home with him so that he could get through more than his competitors in his office. He was not content to conform to the usual office hours, and he developed such a capacity for work that he found all sorts of possibilities which the others never discovered, so he soon left them far below him on the ladder of success which all were starting to climb.

Be sure that you need not go looking for your opportunities if you do your daily work with all the powers of your mind. Carlyle says: "Our grand business, undoubtedly, is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what is clearly at hand."

Do your work faithfully and do as much work every day as you can, and opportunity will come knocking at your door. Only the lazy complain of the fickleness of fortune, and their ill-luck, as they term it, is their just reward for idleness. Remember what Ruskin says in his Lectures on Art: "Life without industry is GUILT," and it is guilt that surely brings its own punishment. You have all the experience of the past to profit by. Believe that, as the days go on and your experience increases, knowledge will increase with it, and that with industry you will acquire wisdom, and with wisdom gain everything that you can desire.

CHAPTER III

EVERY MAN HIS OWN MIND-MAKER

"Whatsoever the mind has ordained for itself it has achieved.”

MOST

SENECA.

OST people are mentally lazy. They may be active and energetic enough as regards their bodily faculties, but they absolutely refuse to use their minds more than they can help. Those who complain of "brain-fag are very often suffering from mental lassitude because they do not give their minds enough exercise. It ought to be known by everybody that the brain requires judicious exercise quite as much as the body does. People with active minds do not complain of brain-fag; it is the mentally indolent who do that.

Why is it that country dwellers are not so quickwitted as those who live in the great cities? It is simply due to the fact that business life in the big towns is a constant process of sharpening the intellect. Daily intercourse with large numbers of people, and the continual interchange of thought with them on diverse subjects, make the mind

active and keep it naturally so. This is no reflection upon the mental capacity of people who live in the country. It is a reason why they should counteract any dullness in their mental surroundings by active thought exercises. Many people living in towns and doing routine work are far less active, mentally, than others living in the country, who have nothing like the same opportunity of mental culture through social and business inter

course.

It is a fact that the mind stagnates and suffers harm if it is not exercised. The Hindu fakir holding his arm motionless above his head from year's end to year's end deliberately allows it to wither. The left hand of most people is useless for many purposes because it is not trained. Doctors tell us that each hand is controlled in its movements by a different side of the brain. We all know that the left hand is as capable of writing as the right hand is, yet when we try to use it for that purpose the results are ludicrous. Careful and constant practice would soon enable us to write with equal facility with either hand. We simply allow that part of the brain which controls the necessary movements of the left hand to lose its power. By careful cultivation we could restore the control, and it would be all the better for the brain if we did So. This is but one example of the manner in

which many parts of the brain are neglected by most people, and it shows what can be done to develop latent abilities by strengthening different sections of the brain if we devote ourselves to such an aim.

One of the greatest recompenses for hard mental work is the discovery from time to time of unsuspected talents. A lot of people question their abilities to cope with new work, the scope of which lies rather outside their ordinary experience. They are afraid to undertake tasks which involve work of an entirely new nature work which cannot be performed by reference to the actual experience of the past. These are the people who keep in one groove, who never advance beyond the stage of mediocrity in their life's work. The man who is continually reaching out after more experience, who is not afraid to tackle a big task because it requires imagination and resource, finds that his brain will respond to the call and help him nobly. He finds he is able to do things he never thought he could do, and very often such things are done so well that he is tempted to wonder if there is not a great deal in the theory of successive existences for the same personality. Most men who conduct their work on the principle of undertaking any task that comes their way feel, from time to time, so confident of the right manner in which the work ought