Do your utmost to understand poetic expression, for the poets are the greatest teachers in the world as well as the greatest of all legislators. It is they who teach the great in conduct and the pure in thought. Without education that shall enable us to take them as our friends, life bears upon it the stamp of death. The great poets are now the only truth-tellers left to God. They are free, and they make their lovers free; the great poet is nature's masterpiece. At the touch of his imagination words blossom into beauty. A true poet is the most precious gift to a nation, for he feels keenest the glorious duty of serving truth; he cannot strive for despotism of any kind, for it is still the instinct of all great spirits to be free. More than other authors, the poets make us self-forgetful, make life and the whole human race nobler in our eyes; all things are friendly and sacred to them, all days holy, all good men divine. There is very little worthy work nowadays that does not need some schooling that it may be well done. If you have an opportunity to give yourself this help, don't neglect it. Carefully select the courses that will be most helpful to you in your career, and don't be side-tracked by any of what we sentimentalists term "culture studies." There's nothing better in the world than culture study, if we can afford it and have time for it. But there is not a greater or more wicked waste of valuable time than the time spent upon what some sentimentalists term culture study. When you have once taken up the studies you have decided upon, keep steadily to your course and shun diversions. Recreations are as essential to the student who intends to do high-class work as food is to the body; but diversions disqualify him for earnest work, and may breed a habit of halfness that shall bring his failure. Don't be foolish and hope to be great in many lines. Who sips of many arts drinks none. In every vocation to-day competition is so keen that the man who will succeed must be content to be supreme in one thing alone. _Halfness_ weakens all our spiritual powers, and thoroughness is the _central_ passion of all worthy characters.