But presently his eye brightened, his little form stood erect, as he formed a mighty resolve, and he stamped the soil proudly while he cried, "I will yet be master of this estate." From that moment his character took form. Slowly he pressed his way through poverty, hard toil, sore trials, and vast discouragements. Night and day he plodded and studied. He left his native land for India. He became eminent for his knowledge of that country's history, languages, customs, and literature. Slowly at first, but rapidly at length, he acquired wealth, and became at last the Governor General of the great British Empire of the East. But years before this the noted Warren Hastings had recovered and owned the home of his ancestors. That decision of his boyhood had governed and guided him like a star of destiny.

Decision is one of the conspicuous elements of victory in all our undertakings. The wavering mind rarely accomplishes anything. Decision becomes an incentive for action. With a purpose once fixed, victory will eventually crown our labor.

Danger of Being Side-Tracked.

TH

PROF. JAMES R. TRUAX, M.A., Union College, Schenectady, N. Y.

HE expression "side-tracked" is ordinarily used by business men with a tone of vexation, to explain the nonarrival of expected goods. "Ought to have been here a week ago. Side-tracked somewhere. No telling when we'll

get them now."

But why side-tracked? Why not moving forward on schedule time? Why have they lost their place in the procession? The possible reasons are various. The delayed freight may be of small relative value. Hungry populations are waiting for their supplies of dressed beef, and, when the rails are crowded, they must go forward, but rags and old iron can wait. The order in which interrupted railway traffic is resumed is instructive. First the limiteds carrying through mails, ingenious substitutes for actual personalities; or bearing living brains in such demand that an attempt is made to annihilate time and space to make them omnipresent,--the physician hurrying to a critical consultation; the lawyer to the defense of property, reputation, or life; the merchant to secure a coveted bargain; the manufacturer to gain a contract involving employment for thousands, or to obtain an invention that will revolutionize industry; the statesman to sway, perhaps, the policy of a nation;-many of the passengers, single factors in comprehensive movements, the success of which as a whole depends upon the dispatch of each. Afterward come the ordinary trains with the shoppers, and visitors, and minor workmen; then raw emigrant labor; then perishable freight, and, last of all, the bulk of common commodities.

Side-tracking may also be the result of disability, due to structural weakness, to overloading, to premature start, to careless running.

Human life is a close parallel. There is the man who wants to do only very easy things, and who fails to realize that he thereby enrolls himself among the classes least in demand, and that when the ways are crowded he will be thrust aside. Students often think they act wisely in moving in the direction of least resistance, overtraining where nature has done most, and neglecting themselves where effort costs pain and so declares a need. They do not comprehend the truth that it is a full mental training that enables a man to adapt himself readily to varied demands and to novel situations, and that the ability to meet new emergencies by inventiveness is rarer and better paid than mere imitative skill. Two brothers of my acquaintance, the exact counterparts of each other in appearance, and of identical opportunity, separated on this line. One is satisfied with a small office, a clerk's routine, so much of the world as he can see in his daily walks between his home and place of business. The other is an organizer, has traveled over a large part of the globe, is an associate of the most stirring and influential, a developer of inventions demanded by an age of progress, and a rapid accumulator of wealth. There are young workmen who prefer easy piece work to a complete trade, but they gain no varied power and their life is subject to frequent fluctuations between employment and idleness. Young men would rather take a pleasant clerkship than put on the blouse and learn the details of a great manufacturing business, and so they grow gray-haired on the same stools, among scores of applicants for their seats, while the slowly developed superintendent, or manager, or master-mechanic advances in value and in independence with each added year. Lucrative political jobs seduce many a young man into neglect of himself and of opportunities for permanent success, and then like the magician's horse they vanish and leave the rider midstream to struggle alone against an overwhelming current.

Some men are disabled by overloading; they marry too soon or undertake too many enterprises at once, and, moving sluggishly or fitfully, are in the way. Others are disabled by a premature start; they are overconfident, and enter upon professional life with sadly inferior preparation, so that every task means not only the visible performance, but the feverish effort to get in readiness. Their work at best is hasty patchwork, needing constant renewal. They are ever losing opportunities that cannot wait, and are outdistanced by younger competitors of no great initial ability.

Great numbers are crippled by intemperance, or by any indulgence that impairs mental or physical powers, or creates unreliability in performance. They can be found on white cots in hospitals, or moving about, languid and wan, with vital force nearly consumed, the dupes of mocking pleasure. They can be seen reeling homeward along busy streets, literally very much in the way of active men. The world scarcely heeds them except to remark "What a pity!" They are never included in any movement of business or wholesome recreation. In young manhood, they are retired far more completely than is the aged citizen whose mind is richly stored with experience even though the physical powers may be too weak for action. Sometimes they are set in motion for short runs, but only to break down more dismally each time, until finally they become an encumbrance even to a side-track, and are turned over the embankment to become covered with weeds and rubbish.

One of this class, who had heard of the recent wreck of another, saw, through the glass door of the saloon where he had been saturating himself, a sober acquaintance approaching. Hurrying out he met him and began, "Say-I want to ask-you -a-question. Why-did-Smith-lose his place?" The gentleman addressed, wishing to be as considerate as possible, replied, "Really, I don't know all the reasons. You know he hasn't been in good health for a year or two." But without further delay and with drunken frankness, the inquirer remarked, "Say -do you know-he often lectured-me-for the-same thing?”

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'Well, it's a good thing to give it up, isn't it?"

"Ye-es,"

with evident sincerity. But still, well-bred as he is, he will not give up. He will stay on the side-track.

Some men are weakened by flattery until they cease to cultivate their powers, cease to question facts, cease to heed honest critics, until some day they find themselves deserted, as weakness itself, even when they thought themselves to be storage batteries of exhaustless energy. On the other hand some are hampered by timidity. They side-track themselves, and deteriorate by disuse, while more confident men of less worth hazard more and gain strength and skill in service. Even Shakespeare would have been side-tracked if he had remained in Stratford instead of pushing boldly out for London, to make or mar his fortunes in that world of keen strife.

Some men are disabled by a misdirected competition, as a freight would be if it attempted to run on the time of an express. The poor clerk thinks he must keep up with his extravagant friends of superior positions. There are costly lunches, gener ous tips, fashionable clothing, expensive recreations, some gambling, neglect of home, putting off of creditors, shortage in accounts, disastrous speculation, despair, robbery, flight. Perhaps an influential friend succeeds in calling off the sleuthhounds of the law, or in obtaining a suspension of judgment after arrest, but how shall he be put on the main track again? It is next to an impossibility to secure for him any place of financial trust. He is prone to be a borrower, a delinquent debtor, a gambler, in spite of his lesson. He is side-tracked for the rest of his life.

Distrust arises in various ways. A man who gains some ends by selfish scheming and underhand practice imagines he has found the key to success. At first it seems so, but a day comes when he is understood; his plausible words have no value; his essential falsity overbalances all his protestations, and even when he would be true, he is denied the chance, the doors are all closed against him, and he cannot be true even to himself because he has been false to all the world.