You have just been admitted to the privileges of this institution, and are about to enter here upon a course of study. The occasion is one eminently suited for serious reflection. At the close of a school career it is difficult not to reflect. Thoughts upon one's course will, at such a time, force themselves upon us. But then it is too late. The good we might have achieved, is beyond our grasp, and its contemplation is profitable only as a legitimate topic of contrition. How much wiser and more profitable to anticipate the serious judgment which sooner or later we must pass upon our actions, and so to shape our conduct in advance, that the retrospect, when it comes, may be a source of joy and congratulation, rather than of shame and repentance. How much wiser to direct our bark to some definite and well selected channel, than to float at random along the current of events, the sport of every idle wave. Men are divided into two classes,--those who control their own destiny, doing what they mean to do, living according to a plan which they prefer and prepare, and those who are controlled by circumstances, who have a vague purpose of doing something or being somebody in the world, but leave the means to chance. The season of youth generally determines to which of these classes you will ultimately belong. It is here, at school, that you decide whether, when you come to man's estate, you will be a governing man, or whether you will be a mere aimless driveller. Those who at the beginning of a course in school make to themselves a distinct aim, towards which day after day they work their course, undiscouraged by defeat, unseduced by ease or the temptation of a temporary pleasure, not only win the immediate objects of pursuit, but gain for themselves those habits of aiming, of perseverance, of self-control, which will make them hereafter controlling and governing men. Those, on the contrary, who enter upon an academic career with an indefinite purpose of studying after a fashion, whenever it is not too hot, or too cold, or the lessons are not too hard, or there is nothing special going on to distract the attention, or who are content to swim along lazily with the multitude, trusting to the good-nature of the teacher, to an occasional deception, or to the general chapter of accidents, for escape from censure, and for such an amount of proficiency as on the whole will pass muster with friends or the public,--depend upon it, such youths are doomed, inevitably doomed, all their days, to be nobodies, or worse.