It is nobler to be confined to one calling, and to excel in that, than to dabble in forty. There is some odor about a dabbler that makes him especially offensive to all clean high-class men and women. But when we have formed the habit of doing carelessly other tasks than our life-work, we shall soon get into the way of doing carelessly the work of our chosen calling. There is nothing that gives us greater assurance that our life-work will be thoroughly done than to habituate ourselves to do the slightest task completely. Sing the last note fully, make the last letter of your name complete. Eat the last morsel deliberately. In a real man's life there are no trifles. Whatever is worth doing by him is worth doing well. The many-sided Edward Everett attributed his being able to do so many things well to his early habit of doing even the least thing thoroughly. He used to say that he prided himself upon the way he tied up the smallest paper parcel. Although schools may be very helpful, don't forget to emphasize again that they are merely helpers. The man is somebody only when the fight is won within himself. Without the schools men have often reached the pinnacles of success, through their own individual earnestness and energy. Schools make wise men wiser, but they may make fools greater fools than ever. If colleges have fallen somewhat into disrepute, it is largely due to the fact that we may have sent more fools than wise men to college. Many a man has been the better for being too poor to attend school, like Franklin, Lincoln, Peter Cooper, and ten thousand other Americans. Their thirst for what books had to give them forced them to work harder and to deny themselves all the enjoyments that so vulgarize yet so charm the cheaper brood. All that is won by sacrifice and downright hard work is priceless, and many noble men and women who have risen to high honor and station owe their place and power solely to this. Be always mindful that power is the only safe foundation for reputation. Thoughtful Americans are not concerning themselves about who your ancestors were, and whether or not they were graduated from some college. Like Doctor Holmes, they feel that old families and old trees generally have their best parts underground, and that the only progressive is the man who is bigger in thought and feeling and accomplishment than his father was. They believe that it is unimportant where you buy your educational tools, if you are only doing good work with them. There is only one _true aristocracy in America_--those with more spiritual power and individual accomplishment than the rest of men. Emerson says that "all the winds that move the vanes of universities blow from antiquity," and this is responsible for many foolish words and many fool acts of schoolmen which are so often misleading the unsuspecting public.