The board of trustees have been strengthened in the position they have taken, by the fact that a similar course for the future has recently been announced by the authorities of Harvard University. Within the last six days, I have received a circular from the secretary of that venerable college, which announces that two-thirds of the Latin and Greek are hereafter to be stricken from the list of required studies of the college course.

I rejoice that the movement has begun. Other colleges must follow the example; and the day will not be far distant when it shall be the pride of a scholar that he is also a worker, and when the worker shall not refuse to become a scholar because he despises a trifler.

I congratulate you that this change does not reduce the amount of labor required of you. If it did, I should deplore it. I beseech you to remember that the genius of success is still the genius of labor. If hard work is not another name for talent, it is the best possible substitute for it. In the long-run, the chief difference in men will be found in the amount of work they do. Do not trust to what lazy men call the spur of the occasion. If you wish to wear spurs in the tournament of life, you must buckle them to your own heels before you enter the lists.

.

Men look with admiring wonder upon a great intellectual effort, like Webster's reply to Hayne, and seem to think that it leaped into life by the inspiration of the moment. But if by some intellectual chemistry we could resolve that masterly speech into its several elements of power, and trace each to its source, we should find that every constituent force had been elaborated twenty years before, it may be, in some hour of earnest intellectual labor. Occasion may be the buglecall that summons an army to battle; but the blast of a bugle cannot ever make soldiers, or win victories.

And finally, young gentlemen, learn to cultivate a wise reliance, based not on what you hope, but on what you perform. It has long been the habit of this institution, if I may so speak, to throw young men overboard, and let them sink or swim. None have yet drowned who were worth the saving. I hope the practice will be continued, and that you will not rely upon outside help for growth or success. Give crutches to cripples; but go you forth with brave true hearts, knowing that fortune dwells in your brain and muscle, and that labor is the only human symbol of Omnip

otence.

VIII.

Elements of Success.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE STUDENTS OF THE SPENCERIAN BUSINESS COLLEGE, WASHINGTON, D.C.,

JUNE 29, 1869.