your own merits. Look with scorn and contempt upon low and vicious
practices. Cultivate pride of character. I care not how proud the
youthful are of all their valuable attainments, their correct
habits, their excellings in that which is manly, useful, and good.
The more pride of this description, the better. Though it should
reach even to egotism and vanity, it is much better than no pride in
these things. This pride in doing right is one of the preserving
ingredients, the very salt of man's moral character, which prevents
from plunging into vice.

Live for something besides _self_. Build with your own hands, the
monument that shall perpetuate your memory, when the dust has
claimed your body. Do good. Live for others, if you would be
embalmed in their recollections.

"Thousands of men breathe, move, and live--pass off the stage of
life, and are heard of no more. Why! They did not a particle of good
in the world; and none were blessed by them; none could point to
them as the instruments of their redemption; not a line they wrote,
not a word they spoke could be recalled, and so they perished;
their light went out in darkness, and they were not remembered more
than the insects of yesterday. Will you thus live and die, O man
immortal? Live for something. Do good, and leave behind you a
monument of virtue that the storm of time can never Destroy. Write
your name by kindness, love, and mercy, on the hearts of the
thousands you come in contact with year by year, and you will never
be forgotten. No, your name--your deeds--will be as legible on the
hearts you leave behind, as the stars on the brow of evening. Good
deeds will shine as brightly on the earth as the stars of
heaven."[1]