But to know one's opportunity when he sees it, is the secret of life's
great problem. "Know thy opportunity," is the motto of Pittacus of
Mitylene, one of the seven wise men. It is inscribed in the temple of
Apollo at Delphi. And each day, in the temple of our memory, we should
write it anew. For the practical question is not whether we are making the
most of our opportunities, but whether we are conscious of them at all.

Moreover, to know them _instantly_ as well as to know them instinctively
is essential to our well-being. When Victor Hugo charges us to take all
reasonable advantage of that which the present offers, he reveals the true
character of opportunity. It lives only in the present tense, it knows no
to-morrows, and makes a record of the yesterdays only when it has found
lodgment in our lives.

Suppose DeWitt Clinton, denounced and ridiculed, had been led into the
belief that his idea was a mere phantom, a mystic nightmare, the Erie
Canal would not be a reality. Suppose Robert Fulton had accepted the
issuing vapor of the tea-kettle as a mere phenomenon without seeking in it
the opportunity for a mighty purpose; suppose that Cyrus W. Field or
Marconi, or Edison or Ericsson, or the hundreds of others who by their
inventive genius have been a blessing to mankind, had been contented with
simply dreaming of the stupendous undertakings which they achieved!

It is the man who knows his opportunities when he sees them, who grips
them as they pass, who stands at the door of his activities ready to
welcome and turn to good account each new opportunity that comes, that is
the typically successful man. Many young men have had noble ideas, backed
by strong convictions, but failing to "strike while the iron was hot,"
have let their convictions die, the mental picture of their ideals vanish,
and to their sorrow have seen them wrought by another into reality.