you must fight for yourself,--you must be your own soldier. You cannot
buy a substitute, you cannot win a reprieve, you can never be placed on
the retired list. The retired list of life is,--death. The world is
busy with its own cares, sorrows and joys, and pays little heed to you.
There is but one great password to success,--self-reliance.

If you would learn to converse, put yourself into positions where you
_must_ speak. If you would conquer your morbidness, mingle with
the bright people around you, no matter how difficult it may be. If you
desire the power that some one else possesses, do not envy his
strength, and dissipate your energy by weakly wishing his force were
yours. Emulate the process by which it became his, depend on your self-
reliance, pay the price for it, and equal power may be yours. The
individual must look upon himself as an investment, of untold
possibilities if rightly developed,--a mine whose resources can never
be known but by going down into it and bringing out what is hidden.

Man can develop his self-reliance by seeking constantly to surpass
himself. We try too much to surpass others. If we seek ever to surpass
ourselves, we are moving on a uniform line of progress, that gives a
harmonious unifying to our growth in all its parts. Daniel Morrell, at
one time President of the Cambria Rail Works, that employed 7,000 men
and made a rail famed throughout the world, was asked the secret of the
great success of the works. "We have no secret," he said, "but this,--
we always try to beat our last batch of rails." Competition is good,
but it has its danger side. There is a tendency to sacrifice real worth
to mere appearance, to have seeming rather than reality. But the true
competition is the competition of the individual with himself,--his
present seeking to excel his past. This means real growth from within.
Self-reliance develops it, and it develops self-reliance. Let the