It has been well said that "Ignorance is a voluntary misfortune," and that "If the brain sows not corn it plants thistles." Were a farmer to leave a field a year untilled, not only would the corn supply that it might have yielded be lost, but the ground would produce in abundance useless weeds that would scatter their seed on the wind over the whole country-side; neither brain nor cornfield will remain neutral and dormant; a crop of something or other is inevitable. "If a man empties his purse," says the proverb, "into his head no man can take it from him;" and other good adages are: "Not the studies, but the study, makes the scholar"; "Inquirers who are always inquiring never learn anything"; "It is less painful to learn in youth than to be ignorant in age"; while the doctrine of plain living and high thinking was admirably foreshadowed in this: "Cater frugally for the body, but feed the mind sumptuously"--an altogether excellent precept, and we must remember that, when all is done, the best and most important part of a man's education is that which he gives himself, and which fits him in this great workshop of the world to use his tools to the best advantage, and contribute something of value to the general store. It is a wise counsel to "Read not books alone but men, and chiefly to be careful to read oneself"--to take stock of oneself from time to time; that youth should remember what seems too difficult then to realise, that a day will come when youth has fled, when the demands of life will continue, and the power to meet them will have weakened. Such proverbs as these should be pondered over: "Reckless youth makes rueful age"; "If youth knew what age would crave, it would both get and save"; "A young man negligent, an old man necessitous." The same truth is put as clearly, but not so lugubriously, in the quainter saying: "He that saveth his dinner will have the more for his supper"--he that spares, that is, when he is young may the better spend when he is old. We have this, again, in a slightly varied and more intense form in the French, "He sups ill who eats all at dinner." When the youth goes forth into the world his knowledge of the trials and temptations of life is small, while his faith in himself is great, and he sadly needs, far more than he knows, guidance, human and divine. What of counsel and of warning will our proverbs yield here?