Reflecting on those things before I came here, it seemed to me that I should better repay your kindness by speaking to you to-night, in the simplest and plainest language that I can use, on the subject that so much engaged my thoughts at your time of life. I do not know that anything that I have to say can interest you; but it seems to me that the subject is one of as much interest to you as any other that I could select. I confess that I should be glad if you should be pleased with what I have to say; particularly if any of you should be able to find in anything that I shall say any grain of comfort or encouragement.

It is not a matter of indifference to me as to how you get through the world; young people often think that older people have no sympathy with them; but such is far from being the case. On the contrary our interest increases with increasing years. You know that we naturally become more attached to things when we know that we shall soon part from them. A friend never seems so dear to us as when we become aware of the fact that after a little while we shall look upon his face no more. A wise man does not have to be very old before he begins to perceive that his horizon is growing narrower and that the shades of evening are beginning to steal across the landscape. He begins to prize each re-union of friends, every kindly memory of the past, more and more as the days go by. In youth life sometimes seemed to him to be a comedy, a jest, a dream; some odd medley which might have been brought about by chance and which has but little meaning; but as he gets older he seems to discover that it has a meaning in every part, though that meaning is so deeply hidden that the heart of man cannot wholly search it out. What is it that has kept these hearts of ours, mere things of flesh, beating on and on, even during the night when we slept

without ever forgetting themselves or stopping for a single moment?

Though man is in a large measure the architect of his own fortune, yet he sees that many of the most momentous and important things in his life have depended on events so inconceivably trivial, that at the time that they took place they were not thought worthy of the slightest notice. Through the merest indifference he goes down one street instead of another and by reason of that and that alone he meets a future friend or wife whose influence over him is to be always afterwards predominent in many respects for good or for evil. A single friendly or unfriendly word, a single averted or a single kindly glance, and the current of a man's destiny is changed forever. For himself he knows that the chances for any sudden change of such immense importance, save by sickness or death, are greatly diminished. In looking backward he sees that unconsciously, he knows not how, he has been in direct communication with that unseen world upon whose brink we walk from the cradle to the grave. Of many things that have happened in his life, he is bound to say that they are not of man's doing. Though men may have had much to do with the actual results, yet it is obvious that those results were not foreseen by them, or counted upon by them in

any way.

Many things come to have a meaning to one in advancing years which they can never have to one who is much younger. I doubt whether there is any young man now living who can have anything like a realizing sense of the full import of the expression "a failure in life." The reason is not that they are wanting in sense or capacity; for I think that in proportion there are as many old fools as there are young ones; but they feel themselves to be full of strength and energy and hope, and they think that if they get into trouble they can

either get out of it again, or that they can shake it off. They cannot realize that when the trouble comes as a strong man, it may come at a time when their stock of vivacity, strength, energy and hope has been much impaired. It is as impossible for them to have a realizing sense of that fact as it is for a man with good eye-sight to realize himself as a blind man. It is not his fault that he cannot do so; the effort simply transcends his faculties.

My pursuit in life has brought me in contact with many men who have failed in life more or less; and yet I have not seen the worst by far; because I have seen but little of the criminal classes; but I have seen full enough to enable me to say that if young men could only have a fair conception of what is implied in a failure in life, such a thing as a failure in life would be almost unknown; if they could only know the long heart ache, the sense of pain and humiliation, the sleepless nights that stamp themselves on the face and that whiten the hair. In such cases it is not generally true that the man suffers so much for himself. If he stands by himself alone the case is not so hard, though it may be hopeless; but very few men stand alone; and when a man goes down in the world he very commonly carries some one or more down with him; his wife who had willingly trusted her life to his hands, his innocent children, who look up to him for protection and support; and not infrequently he brings loss and sorrow to friends who had confided in his honor.

Very generally, too, any serious failure in life brings with it some taint of moral degradation. Very often the fine sense of honor is blunted, and men will do things that under happier surroundings they would have scorned to do. Instead of looking on life as a field for high endeavor and noble ends, they come to see only the petty things in it, and the dark side of it.

If Shakespeare is called the poet of nature it is not only because he is always in accord with Nature, but because many of his beauties are hidden like many of the beauties of Nature, requiring attention before they can be seen. His genius not only goes directly to the mark, but it is always kept in strict subjection to all surrounding conditions.

So my young friends will remember that it is Macbeth who, speaking contemptuously of everything in life, says:

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all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

This language would not have been suitable to any other character in Shakespeare. It was the language of despair; but it would not have suited for the despair of Othello, or that of Romeo, or that of King Lear, a despair equally deep and hopeless; but utterly different. Nor would it have been suited to Macbeth himself in his better days when he said:

"I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none."

But now it was finely suited to a man, who, having failed in life in every way, had been eaten into by that dry rot, which makes him carp at everything, and poisons his mind against all that is good; to a man who said of himself:

"My way of life

Is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have; but in their stead

Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honor, breath

Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not."

I know that many a modest and deserving young man is ready to despair, saying to himself: "Being equally without wealth or birth, or influential friends or health, or shining abilities, I see a great shadow that lies on my path, and I do not know how it will ever be lifted and my soul is dark within me."

I freely admit that the outlook is not bright, and yet if that same young man has or will acquire the power of self-control, patience and industry, I would willingly pit him against all the pampered scions of wealth and fortune. If you will look over the lives of the great inventors and benefactors, men who have done the most good for our race, you will find that most of them have risen from a far greater degree of obscurity than that which surrounds any of you. Poverty is the mother of thrift; and it is only under the influence of adversity that the human mind bears its best fruit.

It is said that young people go to school in order to "equip" themselves for the duties of life. The phrase may do well enough; but as the act of equipping refers to the putting on of something external, it is not quite accurate; for the learning that you put on outside will do you more harm than good. The learning that will be a real source of strength to you is that which you thoroughly assimilate and make a part of yourself; something that does not show itself in big words or in pedantic snatches from living or dead languages; nothing that smacks of sham and pretence, but something that shall clear your moral vision until you can see the natural beauty of simplicity of manners, simplicity of speech and simplicity of life.

It is clear that the conduct of life is a separate science by itself, the most important of all sciences, the sum