several of them his acting has been so fine that he would have been recognized with admiration even though he had never played Rip Van Winkle at all. It is, accordingly, either ignorance or injustice that describes him as "a one-part actor." Yet, certainly he has obtained his fame and influence mainly by acting one part. This fact has been noticed by various observers in various moods. "I am glad to see you making your fortune, Mr. Jefferson," the late Mr. Charles Mathews said to him, "but I don't like to see you doing it with a carpetbag." Mr. Mathews was obliged to play many parts, and therefore to travel about the world with many trunks full of wardrobe, whereas the blue shirt, the old leather jacket, the red-brown breeches, the stained leggings, the old shoes, the torn red and white silk handerchief, the tattered old hat, the guns and bottle, and the two wigs for Rip Van Winkle can be carried in a single box. The remark of Mr. Mathews, however, was meant to glance at the "one-part" costume, and Mr. Jefferson's reply to this ebullition was at once good humored and significant. "It is perhaps better," he said, "to play one part in different ways than to play many parts all in one way." The explanation of his artistic victory is indicated here. Mr. Jefferson found in the old play of Rip Van Winkle a subject with reference to which he could freely and fully express not only his own human nature at its highest and best but his ideas as to human nature and human life in general.

The part of Rip, indeed, as set forth in the pages of Washington Irving and in the ancient and clumsy play which Jefferson derived from his half-brother, Charles Burke, amounts to nothing; but the part as Mr. Jefferson conceived it and built it up amounts to an epitome of human life, and in that respect it is one of the most valuable parts in the range of the acting drama. Mr. Jefferson was exceedingly fond of it while yet he was a youth, and long before the arrival of that happy time when he was privileged to attempt it on the stage. It was his custom to dress himself as Rip Van Winkle and to act the part alone in his lodgings, and for his own edification and the purposes of study and experiment, years before he acted it in public. His mind instinctively recognized its value. It is a part that contains all of the great extremes of human experience - youth and age, mirth and sadness, humor

and pathos, loss and gain, the natural and the supernatural man in his relations to his fellow men, and man in his relation to the world of spirits. It is domestic without insipidity, and it is romantic without extravagance. In a remote way it is even suggestive of "the sceptered pall of tragedy." Yet it is perfectly simple, and it is sweet, pure, and deeply and richly fraught with the sympathetic emotion of powerful and tender humanity.

HOW TO BE INSIGNIFICANT.

HE world is full of insignificant people. They are born, they go to school, they work, they eat, they sleep, they talk rather frivolously, they live very aimlessly, and one day they die, and the world is not much the poorer because of their disappearance. A few men struggle to the front, rise beyond the humdrum level of the crowd, and make their voices heard above the common clamor. But as for the rest, they are insignificant. Why? Because it is the easiest thing in the world.

Probably the surest way to be insignificant is to inherit wealth. It is generally the greatest possible curse for a man to begin life in opulence. It ties his hands, lowers his ambition, and narrows his sympathies. He is fettered by fashion, and bound tightly by the conventional prejudices of society. He will not succeed in journalism, for he cannot bend his back to begin with the daily drudgery. He will hardly consent to soil his hands in trade; and as for science and art, why should he endure the long toil and severe training of the student when he can occupy the pleasurable position of the patron? Except in a few remarkable cases, the young man who enters on life's tragedy to the music of jingling gold plays an insignificant part, far from danger, and therefore far from honor. My brother, be extremely thankful if you are thrown entirely on your own resources. Many of the men who have won the highest success in commerce and science and art, many of the boldest reformers, most brilliant writers, and most forceful orators, have been men who commenced life without a penny in their pockets. One of the best men I have ever known once thoughtlessly sneered at a young journalist because he lacked the supposed advantage of a college education. He did not know that the successful journalists in the city of London this

day who can put B. A. after their names can be comfortably counted on the fingers of one hand. The smartest journalist in that city to-day had no schooling after he reached twelve years of age, except what he gained by his own unaided efforts. It may seem the strangest paradox, but it is nevertheless a simple, undeniable fact, that poverty is often one of the greatest blessings a man can have in beginning his career. It nerves him for the battle, it hinders self-indulgence, and is a sure preventive of laziness.

Another certain method of acquiring insignificance is a love of ease. "Anything for a quiet life" is the motto which has ruined the prospects of thousands. The man who is content to exist the man who says that work is an excellent thing, and he would rather enjoy a short spell of it, but he feels that "to work between meals is not good for the digestion," that man will always be miserably small and contemptibly insignificant. You have got to climb the ladder of life there is no elevator to take you up. There are prizes to be had, but you must win them - they will not drop into your hands. Do you wish to avoid insignificance and rise to some nobler height of work and character and attainment? Then you must be ready not only to take opportunities, but to make them. You must be strenuous in effort, dogged in perseverance, indomitable in courage, and cheerful and alert in mind. When Cromwell was asked to postpone an enterprise and "wait till the iron was hot," he bravely replied that he would make the iron hot by striking it. That is the dauntless spirit we want to-day - the spirit which laughs at difficulty, and is not to be turned aside from its ambition by all the amiable warnings of prudence or timidity. There is one hymn which is sometimes sung at revival meetings- we do not hear it often now. It begins

"Oh, to be nothing, nothing."

Now, if that is your ambition, you can easily gratify it. Nothingness is soon achieved. But surely no young man with a healthy mind and a Christlike spirit will be deceived by this hideous mockery and caricature of true humility. To want to be nothing is an insult to the God who made you. Was it worth while bringing you into the world to whine and cant about being nothing? Rouse yourself and think! God