no harm done. "The glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time you fall." I would rather do a thing and do it wrong than dilly dally around for a life time and never know whether it was "best" or not. It is all right to be cautious, but all wrong to be overcautious. The thing must be tried. Some risk must be taken. The person who never risks anything will never have anything. The effort must be made.

Find yourself and then get efficiency. Don't be satisfied with the first "find;" there is more there. A man's possibilities are practically unlimited.

ΤΟ

EMERGENCY.

IT has been said, but can't too often be repeated, that "being ready" is in itself success. The statement has been confirmed by every successful man, living or dead. What is the use of being offered a position at a thousand or more dollars a year if one isn't fitted to do the work, and what good would it do to be offered a ten thousand dollar position if one is incompetent to fill it.

Opportunity is not something that comes suddenly and goes by like "The Twentieth Century Limited." Opportunities are coming and going all the time. Some people cannot see them; others can. The clearer the vision the more of them are seen. Opportunities increase as cobwebs in the brain decrease. If a man hasn't his eyes open, opportunities may come or they may not. It makes no difference. The person who is ready is the only one who finds anything worth while to do. Opportunities don't come on the wings of the morning. They are not sent by divine dispensation, or mysterious

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power; they grow. They grow in the mind, but they don't grow in a stagnant brain any more than fish grow in a stagnant pool. A person who is indifferent to his own welfare has the fewest opportunities. The person who is keenly alive has them in abundance.

There are always emergencies in every person's life, and on these emergencies a man swings either up or down. If he is ready he goes up with a bounce; if he isn't ready he goes out of sight like a cannon ball in the ocean. If one knows only enough about his work to hold his job, a dull season will throw him out; but if he is keen enough and understands his business, such an emergency will draw out his capabilities and swing him a notch higher. Being equal to the emergency when it comes is true greatness, and in no other way can a man reach the high places. It was this virtue in Lincoln that placed him in the President's chair. It is being unequal to the task that keeps the unimportant positions so overcrowded that there's no room to move and the high places begging for people who can "do things." Find the man who is equal to his task and stands four square to every proposi

tion that comes along, and scores of places are open to him. To become such a one is not so difficult as it seems. It doesn't require genius. It doesn't require the intellect of a Webster, or the magnetism of a Henry Clay. It is just simply doing the best that can be done. It is doing head-work. It is putting your personality and your whole soul into everything you do. It isn't always necessary for one to tell all he knows, or do all he can; it is only when an emergency arises that such things are necessary; but when that time does come it is worth a lifetime to be able to do it. To be equal to the emergency when it comes is one of the grandest things in the world. If there's anything that will make a man great, that will; without it you can't rise and you never know what you have missed. Sometimes it means a business of your own, a happy home, an independent living, and, sometimes, the presidency of a great corporation, or even of the United States.

I talked the other day with a school teacher, who lives on the banks of the Hudson. She is employed by the parents in that community to teach their children how to keep abreast of the