can stand. Call to mind a number of the world's greatest preachers, or,
using again the better term, teachers, and bear in mind I do not mean
creed, dogma, form, but religious teachers,--and the one class differs
from the other even as the night from the day,--and you will find two
great facts in the life of each and all,--great soul power, grown
chiefly by much time spent in the silence, and the fact that the life of
each has been built upon this one great and all-powerful principle of
love, service, and helpfulness for all mankind.

Is it your ambition to become a great _writer?_ Very good. But remember
that unless you have something to give to the world, something you feel
mankind must have, something that will aid them in their march upward
and onward, unless you have some service of this kind to render, then
you had better be wise, and not take up the pen; for, if your object in
writing is merely fame or money, the number of your readers may be
exceedingly small, possibly a few score or even a few dozen may be a
large estimate.

What an author writes is, after all, the sum total of his life, his
habits, his characteristics, his experiences, his purposes. _He never
can write more than he himself is_. He can never pass beyond his
limitations; and unless he have a purpose higher than writing merely for
fame or self-aggrandizement, he thereby marks his own limitations, and
what he seeks will never come. While he who writes for the world,
because he feels he has something that it needs and that will be a help
to mankind, if it _is_ something it needs, other things being equal,
that which the other man seeks for directly, and so never finds, will
come to him in all its fulness. This is the way it comes, and this way
only. _Mankind cares nothing for you until you have shown that you care
for mankind._