PERSISTENT PURPOSE.

We hear a great deal of talk about genius, talent, luck, chance,
cleverness, and fine manners playing a large part in one's success.
Leaving out luck and chance, all these elements are important factors.
Yet the possession of any or all of them, unaccompanied by a definite
aim, a determined purpose, will not insure success. Men drift into
business. They drift into society. They drift into politics. They drift
into what they fondly and but vainly imagine is religion. If winds and
tides are favorable, all is well; if not, all is wrong. Stalker says:
"Most men merely drift through life, and the work they do is determined
by a hundred different circumstances; they might as well be doing
anything else, or they would prefer to be doing nothing at all." Yet
whatever else may have been lacking in the giants of the race, the men
who have been conspicuously successful have all had one characteristic
in common--doggedness and persistence of purpose.

It does not matter how clever a youth may be, whether he leads his class
in college or outshines all the other boys in his community, he will
never succeed if he lacks this essential of determined persistence. Many
men who might have made brilliant musicians, artists, teachers, lawyers,
able physicians or surgeons, in spite of predictions to the contrary,
have fallen short of success because deficient in this quality.

Persistency of purpose is a power. It creates confidence in others.
Everybody believes in the determined man. When he undertakes anything
his battle is half won, because not only he himself, but every one who
knows him, believes that he will accomplish whatever he sets out to do.
People know that it is useless to oppose a man who uses his