tendency or fancy. Concentration will give to all the secondary or mechanical operations of our effort the ease and exactness of habit, setting free so much more force for initiative, originating power, all that which thrusts a man to the front in his vocation. Concentration, too, will excite the growth of that enthusiasm (the French call it le cœur au métier), without which one can never be a master in his craft.

Workers whom an inexorable destiny has placed in the third class may often find themselves launched upon a career for which they are naturally as unfitted as a colander for the uses of a bucket. Their daily task may leave all their best powers unemployed, while calling for the exercise of those very faculties with which nature has been least careful to endow them. The situation is indeed a hard one. Despondency plucks at the sleeve of him who stands in it. There seems to be no way out. But even here concentration offers the best hope of escape. It has the virtue to so encourage and conserve the feeble capacities in their forced exercise, as to make possible at length that scanty measure of success which may avail to open a door of escape into less trammeled activities. The best way to convince your world, be it a big world or a little, that you can do triumphantly well the thing that you are fitted for, is to do with concentrated fervor and fidelity, when it is your duty, the thing you are manifestly not fitted for. Keep hammering away at one spot long enough and you will make your mark there, be the hammer no bigger than a toothpick.

Hints on How to Think.

REV. B. P. RAYMOND, D.D., President Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn.

WR

E are always safe in questioning nature, and when we are sure of her answer, we may depend upon it with the utmost confidence. How does nature deal with the innocent, beautiful, unthinking babe? For the babe that is born into that home among the hills of New England is not yet a thinker. It has powers that will enable it to think when properly brought into exercise. Indeed, it is not yet properly a person; it has capacity to become a person, that is, a being that thinks and wills. It is an it, and we very correctly call it an it. We say, "Is it not beautiful?" but we never say it, of the boy or girl ten years of age. It has become a person, and we say he or she is beautiful. How does nature bring about this marvelous transformation? She receives this helpless giant from the arms of its mother, and begins its training by compelling the boy to ask questions.

Go out with the boy that has a really living mind after this transformation has been carried on for a few years, and see how nature treats him. She sets up interrogation points along the roadside, and he runs into them. He asks, "What makes it dark?" "Does the sun go to rest because it is dark?” “What makes the moon run with you when you run, and stand still when you stand still?" "Who made the stars?" "Who made God?" "Can God see me in the night? When the gas is out? When I am asleep?" "When does God sleep? Does he not get very tired?" Nature has set up question marks in every empty bird's nest, in every ghostly shadow that goes creeping over the mountain side, in the stars above, set deep and mysterious:

in the blue dome, and in the rocks beneath.

Nature has filled the world with wonders, and her interrogation points become interrogations naturally and necessarily in the mind of every healthy boy and girl, man or woman.

One question answered is a hundred planted, and they spring fresh and green like living shoots about the roots of a great tree. The answer that nature makes to the query how to learn to think is, "Ask questions." If a man observes the rising and setting of the sun as the ox does, without reflection, he will know no more about it than does the ox. He may feel a sense of comfort in the warm light, and may lie down to chew his cud, much as does the ox. His intellectual life will be about as near zero as it is possible for an intellectual being to be.

There is a great deal of mental dissipation in the reading of weak books, books that lead neither to thought nor to action. James Freeman Clarke once gave this advice, "Read much, not many books." He expounded his text by urging thorough reading of the best writers. Some books are worth reading a half dozen times, and many not at all.

man.

We need not be afraid to be ignorant of many of the books of our time, if we know something thoroughly concerning a few great books of the time. Even though a young man may have few opportunities in the schools he may become an educated Let him consult some educated man who he knows will be glad to help him. Select books along some serious line of solid reading, and then by a little determination adhere to a plan to read in that line every day for a year. One will be surprised at himself as he looks back over the ground covered by an hour a day of real work. He will begin to find himself at home among thoughtful men on that subject. He will grow in intellect, in self-respect, and will find himself related to the kind of men and books that quicken thought. Every great science is more or less intimately related to every other science. "Read much, not many books." Learn something well.

This habit of asking questions of nature, of great books; the habit of looking through nature and books for the mighty forces

which explain nature and history, calls out the reflective powers of the soul, trains the man to think, and he reaps his reward in increased possessions and enjoyments of the best things.

The man who is passive and who reflects not at all upon nature, man, God, or destiny, knows next to nothing. The man who reflects little, knows little, and the man who summons himself to reflection that is vigorous, searching, sustained, and extensive, knows much. This power cannot be inherited. It cannot be put on and taken off like a suit of clothes. It is a power gained by mental gymnastics. Swing the clubs of reform. Think! Race with the swift-footed ideas as they run through the course of history. Think! Wrestle with the problems of politics, morals, and religion. Think! Do not be in a hurry, but think, conclude, and act. This is the philosophy of mental growth in a nutshell.

The North American Indian who lives in our great West does very little thinking; he does not summon himself to the task of askirg and answering hard questions. He stands at the confluence of two mighty rivers, and only sees a promising pool for fish to supply his physical need, or a beautiful stream on which to dream while he floats his birch canoe. He sees upon the prairie only the buffalo herd, hears the thunder of its wild rush, but thinks only of buffalo skins to keep him warm when the winter moons return. He sees the mountains, but thinks only of the wild turkey or the fallow deer. He does not summon his thoughts to anything deeper or worthier than the supply of his physical necessities. The white man's mind acts upon this scene in quite a different way because he has trained himself to think. He sees the same streams and the same prairie and buffalo herd with its stalwart leader, but he thinks little or not at all of fish, or birch canoes, or buffalo meat, or skins; he sees the promise of a great city at that favored center. He sees the support of teeming millions in the vast prairies which lie fat and rich and wide about him. He sees the mountains, but no wild turkey; the fallow deer do not attract him, except it may be for a passing moment. He sees in the mountains the coal and

copper, the iron, silver, and gold which make civilization possible and powerful. What is the difference between him and the North American Indian? Just this: the white man thinks, he applies his mind to the phenomena about him, asks a thousand questions, turns nature around and looks at her on every side, sees her in manifold relations, knows her, loves her, wooes her, wins her, and what a bride she becomes to him! We may learn to think by thinking. Ask questions and then answer them, raise difficulties and then remove them.