The best work real teachers do for their pupils is by no means the teaching of a few minor branches--it is almost always the work he is not paid for, and which nobody outside of those who realize what real education is, seems ever to consider. It is sympathy for their students, getting them to understand the great things that are involved in the process of getting an education, making them realize that true education means growth of all our spiritual faculties--head and heart and will, and that what we get from textbooks is the very least part of an education. It is helping them to understand that knowledge got from books and from schoolmasters is always a menace to a man whose spiritual faculties of head, heart, and will have not been thoroughly disciplined. It is wise counsel in choosing a life career. Instead of looking upon this side of the work as divine, instead of being wise counselors and friendly guides during this great transitional stage from youth to manhood, teachers can be far more interested in their individual concerns or in what they call "research-work"--the research-work may give some temporary glory to themselves, and give some little advertisement to the institutions that employ them; but the supreme duty they owe to their students, to God, and to humanity is to do their utmost to make full men, and worthy and successful men, out of the youths whose education they have taken upon themselves. No traitor is such a traitor to his country and to the whole world as the man who is unfaithful to this sacred trust. Once again, find some sincere and prudent elder counselor, and turn to him in all your difficulties. Get advice as to the best books to read--a good book is the best of counselors, for it is the best of some good man; and it is a patient counselor whom we may continually consult upon the same subject as often as we wish. But waste no time, especially at the opening of your career, upon books which have no message for your manhood and no helpfulness in the work you shall assume for life. When you have once taken up a book as your counselor, don't put it aside until it has been thoroughly digested and assimilated. One book read is worth a hundred books peeped through; and of all the dilettantes, a literary dilettante is the most contemptible. Bacon says, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, some few to be chewed and digested." But it is only the books that are to be chewed and digested that we can afford to peruse at the outset in our career; the literary pleasure--gardens--may come later in life.