While it is impossible, in a world made up of widely differing individuals, to formulate a set of rules by which each could be shown the surest and swiftest way to secure success in life, still it is possible to call attention to certain qualities of mind and character whose possession has come to be universally looked upon as essential to those who may aspire to struggle into the front rank of the world's workers. As a matter of fact, it would be as difficult to define the common expression " success in life" as it would be to lay down a royal road which leads to it. Given a hundred definitions, from as many men, each treating the subject from his own standpoint, and no two of them would be found alike; and the opinion of each of these, as time passed along with its inevitable ups and downs, would be found to vary considerably. Flushed with recent success, the speculator to-day would see in the possession of millions and in the control of vast interests the only proper goal for a man of his great genius; tamed a few days later by unexpected reverses, and he sees in some conservative enterprise the fittest sphere of his future usefulness.

Perhaps, then, without attempting the impossible, in a definition of success in life which will fit all who are seeking it, it will do to look upon it as the accomplishment of the laudable life-purpose of a man of natural or cultivated parts, who has found an object in life worth living and working for, and has worked honestly and perseveringly to attain it. As a rule, the larger the endowment of those faculties which go to build up success in life, the higher the aim which accompanies them; but it must not be forgotten that man is the most cultivable of all God's creatures, and that by careful and intelligent study of the qualities which have enabled others to shine, one may acquire them and employ them in building up similar accomplishments. This being so, it does not lie in the power of the young man who feels that he possesses only a moderate share of intelligence, force and ability, to decide, on this account, that he is not called upon to make fight for one of the front places in the life of this generation. The most brilliant lives have often been those of men of ordinary gifts, who, exerting to the utmost such power as has been given them, have accomplished more than hundreds of men who were much more bountifully supplied with mental qualifications.

If any man look among the circle of his acquaintances he will be surprised to see how few have made the voyage of life successfully, and sorrow cannot but arise when he considers the impotent conclusions to which young men of brilliant parts frequently come. Every day witnesses the triumph of patient and studious mediocrity, and men of great intellect are constantly being forced to acknowledge, with surprise, the success of persons whose abilities, in comparison with their own, have been deemed inconsiderable. These men know precisely the scope of their faculties, and never wander beyond them. They wait patiently for opportunities which are of the kind they can improve, and they never let one pass unimproved. Being unnoticed, they excite so much the less opposition, and at last they surprise the world by the attainment of an object which others deemed as far away from their ambition as it seemed beyond their reach.