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Kansas University Weekly.
dent's Capital." A man commencing business must consider the capital he has to work with. As usually considered it is the money in his pocket. A student's capital is the brains in his head. It is the faculties he has been endowed with, the capacity of his mind. Education does not create anything, it only enlarges and refines. It does not create capacity, it only fills out. You have all heard the old story of the rich man's son, who was sent to a noted teacher for training. After a season of trial the teacher sent the boy home with a note, saying, he could do nothing with the boy, for he had no capacity. The father who, like the father of Flora McFlimsey, "Little by little had grown to be rich, by saving of candle ends and sich," wrote back: "Buy him a capacity; we will not stand on a little expense." But capacities are not for sale in the market, and a man can only have what has been given him. Money will buy many things, but not this. A man may buy a poem. In slavery times he might buy a poet, but he can never buy the power to be a poet. An ignorant man was elected to a high office. He went to a judge to be sworn in. "I have been elected to such an office and I want you to qualify me." The judge replied: "I can swear you in but I can not qualify you. That was God's work, and he has not seen fit to do it." No wiser counsel can be given to any student than that which Paul gave to the Roman disciples, "Let no man think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but let him think soberly, according as the Lord hath dealt to every man the measure of faith," that is, the measure of capacity. A student needs to know himself. He needs to cultivate the power he has, and not waste his time in trying to develop powers he never had, and never can have. You can never put a fine polish on a piece of basswood. You can never make a keen blade from a bar of pewter. A tin sword may glisten, but it will never cut Men are not all made alike, and they are not all made of a size. They vary in kind, in quantity, and in quality. And there is a variety of service awaiting their varying capacities.
God meant something in every man's make up. He gave every man his pattern, and if a man insist on making something else of himself, he will spoil the pattern of God. "Poeta Nascitur, non fit"said the Latins. "A poet is born and not made." Not every one can be a poet; or a singer. All men have something of everything, but they are not all endowed alike. All men have something of invention but all men cannot be inventors. All men have something of poetry, but they cannot all be poets—as any editor will tell you in the springtime. All men have music in them, and they say everybody can learn to sing. But as Artemus Ward says: "Some people are saddest when they sing, so are those who hear them." We are often made sorry that our neighbors daughter was taught to play the piano. We are sure the sum of human happiness has not been increased thereby. Every man may do something in all these lines, but not enough to warrant the cost. Dr. Myron Reed says: "Anybody, by endless drudgery, can make himself into a poor painter. But that is not worth while; there is poor painting enough now. Anybody can be taught to play a violin badly. But there is pain enough in the world already." It is better to do a common thing well, than to do an uncommon thing poorly. Better be an expert in frying pancakes, than to be the butt of ridicule in painting pictures.
Nowhere on earth will a man find his true measure so quickly as in college. College life floats in a free fluid and everyone soon finds his true level. A man's real specific gravity is soon determined. College students have no respect of persons and no respect for pretensions. Nowhere on earth will merit find a quicker recognition and nowhere on earth will conceit come to a quicker collapse. The bird that sails in with fine feathers will soon be walking around with bedraggled wings. It often happens that the valedictorian of the high school fancies that God used a special mould when he was made. He has been at the head of his class from the primary room to the final graduation and he expects to be allowed the