for an infinite variety of purposes, for every circumstance that can arise and for every age and condition that the future has in store. Thackeray, Dickens, and Scott found it as well suited to the life of their times as Homer for his environment two thousand years before.

The writers of France and England still accept it. Their second and third rate writers, men of mere talent without genius, live up to it to the extent of their powers, and their work is the better for it, and far superior to our work of the same class. Even in the United States it continually outsells

our own.

PERILS OF SUCCESS.

N the military family of Washington was one, in the early part of the Revolution, whose great ability, courage, and social qualities commanded universal praise. He had no peer in the service of the court and the camp. Washington, himself, regarded his rich endowments of mind and person as the assurance of the highest and most valuable service to his oppressed and distracted country. But when, at the height of his success in public life, Aaron Burr allowed his baser passions to usurp the place of patriotism and purity, he died, "not as Adams, and Jefferson, and Washington sank into the grave, amidst the tears and prayers of a great nation, but in shame, solitude, and gloom, this profligate, whose ambition it was to tread the fairest flowers into the dust, passed away to the bar of a just God."

A successful merchant of New York city retired from business at forty-five years of age, rich, honored, and satisfied. It is a mistake for men of forty-five to dream and plan for relief from business thereafter. To desire ease, with nothing to do, at that age, when the physical and mental powers are in their prime, is a mistaken view of one's life. work. However successful a person has been up to that time, there is real peril in the idea that a fortune and a good char acter at forty-five entitles one to retire from business and live at ease. It proved so in the case of the wealthy New York merchant. After the care and labor of establishing a princely home on the Hudson were exhausted, and he had nothing to do, a few months sufficed to tell upon his constitution. He began to tire of the monotony, his health became impaired, sleepless nights made him miserable, and finally he became a

confirmed invalid, whom physicians tried in vain to restore. His wealth yielded him no happiness, his beautiful home lost its attractions, and he would have parted with the last dollar of his riches could he have been transferred to his countingroom, with all'its care, perplexities, and hard work. He died before his fiftieth birthday, an illustration, in his untimely death, of the perils of success. Had he been less prosperous, so that he felt the necessity of continuing in business, industrious, enterprising, and tireless, until the winters of threescore years and ten had frosted his head, he might have enjoyed an old age that is a crown of glory.

There are more men and women who are demoralized by success on certain lines than are made more manly and womanly by it. The command of human praise, the ability to shine as a "bright, particular star," the worshipful attention of their fellow men that falls to their lot, drift them away from their surroundings, until, upon a tempestuous sea, without chart or compass, they sink into unknown depths. Robert Walpole remarked, "It is fortunate that few men can be prime ministers, because it is fortunate that few men can know the abandoned profligacy of the human mind." However much exaggeration there was in the sentiment expressed, it certainly contains the unquestioned truth that peculiar perils lurk in the paths of those who share high honors, great power, and overflowing wealth. Wealth hoarded, honor used to inflate pride, and learning acquired for a name only, are mistaken notions of success, that make it the occasion of disgrace and failure. One of the most successful members of the New York bar, a score of years ago, allowed his own life to illustrate our theme. He was talented, eloquent, and magnetic on the rostrum and in the parlor. His practice increased beyond his most sanguine expectations. On account of his abundant gifts, demands were made upon him outside of the legal profession, and he was brought largely thereby into public life. Money poured into his lap, his acquaintance and counsel were sought by the wealthiest class, and he shared general confidence because he was a man of moral and Christian principles. Few men of any profession were ever so successful as he at the time of his marriage. He married a society woman, who introduced him into a social life altogether new to him. Heavy drafts upon his time and purse

multiplied in this new relation as the years rolled on. The enjoyment of his wife, and the bewilderment of social splendor, blinded him to the inevitable issue of affairs, until pecuniary embarrassment stared him in the face. In this hour of temptation, the unlawful appropriation of trust funds to relieve his condition brought him into disgrace, and made his life a failure. But for his success at the bar, in social and political life, his career might have rounded into one of the noblest and best on record.

Stephen Girard devoted his life to the acquisition of wealth, and he was eminently successful in that line. He left his home in France, at ten years of age, and sailed as cabin boy to the West Indies. Thence he proceeded to New York, where he began to trade in small wares, in a small way, and from that time he became a marked example of the practical wisdom of a man whose ruling passion is to be rich. Sometimes he traded in the city in whatever merchandise promised him even the smallest profit, sometimes he commanded a ship upon a voyage to a distant country in the interest of gain. Then a trip of hundreds of miles on land to add to his accumulating wealth enlisted his utmost energy. There was no sort of merchandise that he refused to handle, no sort of labor that he declined to perform, and no hardship. that he would not undergo for money. As if some magical power invested his head and hands with a charm, every enterprise that he undertook added largely and rapidly to his wealth. His touch, like that of the mythical Midas, turned everything into gold. Yet his success only fed a base love of money that belittled his manhood, shriveled his soul, and sent him out of the world a worshiper of gold, his life a failure.

Success in reforms often brings reformers into great tribulation. So long as they do not multiply achievements to any extent they are tolerated, but when they show themselves to be a power, the opposition is aroused, and hardships and perils multiply. This was eminently true of Luther. Born to an inheritance of poverty, the son of a poor miner, he was compelled to sing from house to house in order to obtain money to pay for his schooling. It was the reading of the Scriptures in the convent at Erfurth that opened his eyes to behold the truth, and started him out upon a mission that moved the world. He said: "God ordered that I should be

come a monk, that, being taught by experience, I might take up my pen against the pope." It was David attacking Goliath of Gath; and from that time the perils of his success began. So long as he was the harmless son of a poor miner, he attracted little attention, and pushed onward and upward without opposition. For a poor peasant boy to advance as Luther did was a signal success, and it was this that created his perils. The young monk at Erfurth was proving that he was a power, and as such he must be antagonized. He must be gagged; he must be banished; he must be killed, if necessary! He must be silenced here and now. There was no alternative, and persecution did its worst. It was in this sea of perils, confronting the emperor, princes, and nobles, and dignitaries of the Church, in the city of Worms, that he appeared to realize that success had brought him to the verge of his grave. When ordered to retract the doctrines he had proclaimed or forfeit his life, he answered, as the Christian hero will: "Unless I shall be refuted and convinced by testimonies of the Holy Scriptures, or by public, clear, and evident arguments and reasons, I cannot and will not retract anything, since I believe neither the pope nor the councils alone, and since it is neither safe nor advisable to do anything against the conscience. Here I stand, I cannot otherwise; God help me! Amen." His faith saved him from death. Enemies dared not kill such a servant of God.

It is the same with other reforms. The anti-slavery cause was tolerated until it became a conflict. When it grew to strength, and attracted public attention as an organized agency to destroy slavery, then its troubles began. Success up to a certain point, when the enemy declared, "thus far, but no farther." Then perils multiplied, anathemas, persecutions, mobs, assaults, and death, until the anti-slavery reformer actually took his life into his hands to plead for liberty.

The secret of growth is to do to-day what we could not have done yesterday. It requires no striving, or extra effort, to do to-morrow what we can do to-day as well as not. The effort of doing something greater and better is necessary; for this keeps the faculties at their highest tension, in which there is growth. It is in this way that a youth acquires culture, and eventually becomes learned; in this way the artisan