RESERVE POWER.

"An honest soul is like a ship at sea,
That rides at ease when the ocean's calm,
But when it rages and the wind blows high,
She cuts her way with skill and majesty."
-JOANNA BAILLIE.

O man
can be self-collected and confi-
dent of victory, unless he knows that he
has reserve forces which he can summon
to his aid at a moment's call. The man
who is poor within and knows that he is

poor, is always ill at ease, and ever fearful of a surprise or an ambuscade from some real or imaginary foe. Nothing will give others such confidence in a man as to have him create the impression by his manner that there is more in him than he constantly gives out; and in order to create this impression, lawfully and properly, there must actually be in him more resources than he daily expends. Therefore, unless some great prize is before you, or some all-important issue is at stake-something that demands the exercise of every faculty you possess, and the putting forth of all your strengthit will be better to husband your resources and have a little accumulated fund of power, ability or knowledge on hand, than to work up to the full measure of

your capacity each day and hour, and then, when some unlooked-for crisis comes on and you need extra force, find yourself a physical or intellectual bankrupt, and in imminent danger of collapse.

An old teamster used to say to his sons, when they had a peculiarly long and hard drive to make in a given time: "Boys, you'll be sure to get there, if you don't drive too hard when you first start." And there is much of good sound philosophy wrapped up in the old man's pithy remark. As another has observed, "To serve a long and weary apprenticeship to any calling, to spend years in training the faculties till one has become an athlete, costs, we know, patience and self-denial; but is it not the cheapest in the end? Does not all experience show that in the long run it is easier to be than to seem,-to acquire power, than to hide the lack of it? Was there ever a lazy boy at school or student in college, who did. not take infinitely more pains to dodge recitations and to mask his ignorance than would have been necessary to master his lessons, however dry or crabbed? Is there a mechanic who scrimps his work, that does not cheat himself in the end? Depend upon it, nothing is more exhausting than the shifts to cover up ignorance, the endless contrivances to make nothing pass for something, tinsel for gold, shallowness for depth, emptiness for fullness, cunning for wisdom, sham for reality."

When a man once breaks down, or "plays out "— to use a common expression-his career is necessarily arrested, and he becomes like a steamship in mid-ocean with her fires out or engines disabled. The great criminal lawyer, Rufus Choate, was an

example of this kind. He persisted in transgressing the laws of his physical and mental natures, worked away like a blazing locomotive at every case he took hold of, whether petty or important, and died an exhausted, worn-out man when he should have been in the very fullness and ripeness of his years. Therefore, we say to every worker in the world's great hive, husband your resources, accumulate power, facts and wisdom faster than you can expend them, and always try to be richer and stronger within, than you appear on the surface.

It is said that all machinists construct engines with reserve power. If the force required is four-horse, they make a six-horse power, so that the machine will work easily and last long. In like manner, the man who has strength to do ten hours' work a day, physical or intellectual, should do but seven or eight; and then he may hope to accumulate a reserve fund of energy which will not only round out his frame to fair proportions, and enable him to toil with ease, cheerfulness and alacrity, but furnish a capital, a fund in bank, upon which he can draw heavily in any emergency, when called on to do two days' work in one. Without this capital, he will not only do his work painfully, forever tugging at the oar, but he will be incapable of increasing the strain upon his powers, however urgent the necessity; he cannot put a pound more of pressure upon the engine without an explosion.

There are indeed "some persons of dull and phlegmatic temperament-slow coaches, that jog on at a lazy pace—who need no note of alarm. They need the whip, not the rein; and the utmost speed

you can get out of them will only call their muscles into healthy activity. But there is another class,— the fiery, earnest, zealous men, the nervous men, tremulous as the aspen, enthusiasts in their callings, -who need to economise their nerve-force, unless they would prematurely exhaust themselves and sink into an early grave. Such men need to be reminded that they have but a limited fund of strength, upon which they are making draughts with every breath they draw, and every word they utter, and that therefore they cannot guard too jealously against any waste of their nerve-power."

ACCUMULATION.

The first strong word of advice to every young man who wants to be successful, is, accumulate. If you expect to lead a professional life, you cannot have too large a store of knowledge and facts laid up. It often seems to a student in college that he is merely wasting his time by going through with the routine exercises of the class-room, week after week, and year after year; that the studies he is pursuing can never do him much, if any, good, in after life; but he will find to his sweet satisfaction, when the duties of that after-life press upon him, and he has no time to hunt up facts and opinions, that not a day diligently spent in study in early years, was lost; that all resources of an intellectual nature accumulated when thought and memory were fresh and vigorous, were held by the mind as a sort of capital stock and came into use exactly when most wanted. Many a young man has ruined himself for life because he too

soon thought he knew it all and could do anything, and then found out his mistake only when it was too late to recover the ground so foolishly lost.

Everybody knows that in the composition of an army one of the first essentials of effective action is a well-constituted, powerful, reserved force. It consists of picked men, trained veterans, with a cool, sagacious commander, who can be thrown at any moment into the very thick of the fight, to sustain a faltering legion, or to turn a doubtful combat into a decisive victory. The lack of such a force, or its lack of numbers and discipline, has often made the difference between a battle won and a battle lost. Who that is familiar with the campaigns of Napoleon does not remember how often the trembling scale was turned, and the exultant legions of the enemy were rolled back, just as victory was about "to sit eagle-winged on their crests," by the resistless charge of the Imperial Guard? So also at the bar, in the senate, in the pulpit, in the field of business, in every sphere of human activity, he only organizes victory and commands success behind whose van and corps of battle is heard the steady tramp of the army of the

reserve.

Says Dr. W. W. Patton, "The merchant is in a dangerous position whose means are in goods trusted out over the country on long credits, and who in an emergency has no money in the bank upon which to draw. A heavy deposit, subject to a sight-draft, is the only position of strength. And he only is intellectually strong who has made heavy deposits in the bank of memory, and can draw upon his faculties at any time, according to the necessities of the case."