WORDS TO BOYS.



I WOULD keep "better hours" if I were a boy again; that is, I would go to bed earlier- than most boys do. Nothing gives more mental and bodily vigor than sound rest when properly applied. Sleep is our great replenisher, and if we neglect to take it regularly in childhood, all the worse for us when we grow up. If we go to bed early, We ripen; if we sit up late, we de-cay; and sooner or later we contract a disease called insomnia; and allowing this to be permanently fixed upon us, we begin to decay, even in youth. Late hours are shadows from the grave. 

If I were a boy again, I would practice perseverance oftener, and never give up a thing because it was hard or inconvenient to do. If we want light, we must conquer darkness. When I think of mathematics, I blush at the recollection of how often I "gave in" years ago. There is NO trait more valuable than a determination to persevere when the right thing is to be accomplished. We are inclined to give up too easily in trying or unpleasant situations, and the point I would establish with myself, if the choice was again within my grasp, would be never to relinquish my hold on a possible success, if moral strength or brains in my case were adequate to the occasion.

That was a capital lesson, which a learned professor taught one of his students in the lecture-room after some chemical experiment. The lights had been put out in the hall, and by accident some small article dropped on the floor from the professor's hand. The professor lingered behind, endeavoring to pick it up. "Never mind," said the student," it is of no consequence, sir, whether we find it tonight or not." 

"That is true," said the professor; "but it is of grave consequence to me, as a principle, that I am not foiled in my determination to find it." Perseverance can sometimes equal genius in its results. "There are only two creatures," says the Eastern proverb," who can surmount the pyramids 

the eagle and the snail." 




James T, Fields.