"I am a shadow, So art thou; I mark time, Dost thou?" No. XVII. SELF-CONTROL +Self-control is the power a man exercises over himself--the power to check his desires and passions; the power to deny himself present pleasures for the sake of a great purpose; the power to concentrate his energies on a single object in life.+ Self-control is the basis of all Character, and the root of all the virtues. Without it, man is like a ship that has lost its rudder, and tosses helpless upon the waves. Self-control is one of the hardest things to learn, though no one can succeed in life without it. We say of the poor drunkard: "He could never say no!" The young man who can say no to his friends, when his Conscience tells him he should, has learned one of the hardest lessons of his life, and is in no danger of many of the worst pitfalls of early manhood. Tennyson says: "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power." The wise man said: "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city." A boy at school finds the greatest difficulty in paying _attention_. His mind keeps wandering away from his work. He makes good resolutions, but finds that, in spite of them, he cannot _fix_ his attention. After a time, he despairs of himself, and gives up his chance, and perhaps bitterly disappoints his parents. The trouble was lack of Self-control. He had never learned how to master himself. He who can master himself can master almost any difficulty. He must learn what Concentration means. It is a habit, and can only be acquired little by little, by earnest effort, and a strict watch upon self. A good plan is to keep a watch open, and see how long the mind can be kept at work without suffering any interruption. If we learn to control self in one way, it becomes easier to do so in others. If a boy is given to flying into a rage, and practises checking himself, until the habit is controlled, it will not be nearly so hard to control himself in other ways. One of the hardest things to conquer is the habit of exaggeration; it is so easy to overstate a thing, so hard to keep to the _exact_ truth. The boy who conquers a habit like that is on the road to thorough Self-control.