youth: "Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for
execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled
business. For the experience of age, in things that fall within the
compass of it, directeth them; but in new things abuseth them. The
errors of young men are the ruin of business;


BUT THE ERRORS OF AGED MEN

amount to but this, that more might have been done, or sooner. Young men
in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold;
stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end without consideration of
the means and degrees, pursue some few principles which they have
chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown
inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth
all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them--like an unready horse,
they will neither stop nor turn."


THE HARD-PAN SERIES.

Now with this wise parallel of youth and age before me, with the
importance which I attach to this period of life as the precise moment
at which the final cast of the clay of life is set, and with the belief
in Goethe's statement that the destiny of any nation, at any given time,
depends on the opinions of its young men under twenty-five years of age,
I beg to call the especial attention of the young to a Hard-Pan Series
of ten chapters which follow, devoted largely to just this
forming-period of life, when the mould is ready and the governing
characteristics are fast pouring in. I beg parents and preceptors, if