Keep Learning

"To know wisdom and instruction; To discern the words of understanding;

To receive instruction in wise dealing, In righteousness and justice and equity;

To give prudence to the simple, To the young man knowledge and discretion:

That the wise man may hear, and increase in learning" Proverbs 1: 2-5

No young man on the verge of life ought to be in the least discouraged by the fact that he is not stamped with the hall mark of Yale, Harvard or Oxford.

Reading, indeed, is the real source both of education and of style. Read what you like, not what somebody else tells you that you ought to like. That reading alone is valuable which becomes part of the reader's own mind and nature, and this can never be the case if the matter is not the result of your choosing.

The lonely island of Nantucket might not be considered a very favorable place to win success and fame. But Maria Mitchell, on seventy-five dollars a year, as librarian of the Nantucket Athenaeum, found time and opportunity to become a celebrated astronomer

When all is said and done, the real education is the market-place of the street. There the study of character enables the boy of judgment to develop an uncanny proficiency in estimating the value of the currency of the realm.

Experiences teaches us time and again that no man ought to be downcast in setting out on the adventure of life by a lack of formal knowledge.

If you want to get rich, study yourself and your own wants. You will find that millions have the same wants. The safest business is always connected with man's prime necessities. He must have clothing and a dwelling; he must eat. He wants comforts, facilities of all kinds for pleasure, luxuries, education, and culture. Any man who can supply a great want of humanity, improve any methods which men use, supply any demand of comfort, or contribute in any way to their well-being, can earn great riches.

"One or another
In money or guns may surpass his brother.
But whoever shall know,
As the long days go.
That to live is happy, has found his heaven."

"The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes." - DISRAELI.

Education and Learning

Although not the same kind, there is as much difference between education and learning, as there is between character and reputation.

Learning may be regarded as mental capital, in the way of accumulated facts. Education is the drawing out and development of the best that is in the heart, the head, and the hand.

The civilized world has a score of very learned men, to the one who may be said to be thoroughly educated. The learned man may be familiar with many languages, and sciences, and have all the facts of history and literature at his fingers' tip, and yet be as helpless as an infant and as impractical as a fool. An educated man, a man with his powers developed by training, may know no language but his mother tongue, may be ignorant as to literature and art, and yet be well—yes, even superbly educated.

The learned man's mind may be likened to a store house, or magazine, in which there are a thousand wonderful things, some of which he can make of use in the battle of life. He resembles the miser who fills his coffers with gold and keeps it out of circulation. Beyond the selfish joy of possession, his wealth is worthless, and its acquisition has unfitted him for the struggle. The educated man, to continue the illustration, may not be rich, but he knows how to use every cent he owns, and he places it where, under his energy, it will grow into dollars.

Far be it from us to underestimate the value of learning. Many of the world's greatest men have been learned, but without exception such men have also been educated. They have been trained to make their knowledge available for the benefit of themselves and their fellow men.

The athlete who develops his muscles to their greatest capacity of strength and flexibility, and this can only be done by observing strictly the laws of health, is physically an educated man. Every mechanic whose hands and brain have been trained to the expertness required by the master workman, is well-educated in his particular calling. The man who is an expert accountant, or a trained civil engineer, may know nothing of the higher mathematical principles, but he is better educated than the scholar who has only a theoretical knowledge of all the mathematics that have ever been published.

The educated man is the man who can do something, and the quality of his work marks the degree of his education. One might be learned in law in a phenomenal way, and yet, unless he was educated, trained to the practice, he would be beaten in the preparation of a case by a lawyer's clerk.

There are men who can write and talk learnedly on political economy and the laws of trade, and quote from memory all the statistics of the census library, and yet be immeasurably surpassed in practical business, by a young man whose college was the store, and whose university was the counting room.

It should not be inferred from this that learning is not of the greatest value, or that the facts obtained from the proper books are to be ignored. The best investment a young man can make is in good books, the study of which broadens the mind, and the facts of which equip him the better for his life calling.

To the young man, "thirsting for learning and hungering for education," there are no books more helpful than the biographies of those whom it is well to imitate. Longfellow wisely says:

"Lives of great men all remind us,
   We can make our lives sublime,
 And departing leave behind us,
   Footprints on the sands of time—

 Footprints which perhaps another,
   Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
 A forlorn and ship-wrecked brother,
   Seeing, may take heart again."