There are people who live many years and never grow old. We call them "young patriarchs." Limit not the golden dreams of youth, which, however, would be none the worse for a touch of the patriarch in them. There is sense in youth, and it will assimilate the experience of age if displayed before rather than thrust upon it. Youth should be incited to think for itself, and to select from the wisdom it finds in the world. Then the question comes—what is safe to take? That is the time for words of suggestion. Every one has read of the fox, who seeing a crow with a piece of cheese in her bill, told her "she had a splendid voice, and did herself an injustice by not singing." The credulous crow began a note, dropped the piece of cheese, with which the fox ran away. This trick is always being played. Among young persons there are a great number of crows. A youth is given a situation where advancement goes with assiduity. A fox-headed comrade or clerk below him tells him his "work is beneath his talents, and he ought to get something better." Discontent breeds negligence. He loses his place, when the treacherous prompter, whom he took to be his friend, slips into his situation, and finds it quite satisfactory. In public affairs, in which youth seldom takes part, many are confused by pretences which they understand when too late. A person puts forward an excellent project, and finds it assailed and disparaged by some one he thought would support it. Discouraged by opposition, he comes to doubt the validity of the enterprise he had in hand. When he has abandoned it he finds it taken up by the very person who denounced it, and who claims credit for what he has opposed. All the while he has thought highly of the scheme, but wanted to have the credit of it himself, and therefore defamed it until he could get it into his own hands. This sort of thing is done in Parliament as well as in business. It is only by listening to the experience of others that youth can acquire wariness and guard against serious mistakes.
The young on entering life are often dismayed by dolorous speeches by persons who have never comprehended the nature of the world in which they find themselves. People are told "a great crisis in public affairs is at hand." There never was a time in the history of the world when a "crisis" was not at hand. Nature works by crises. Progress is made up of crises through which mankind has passed. Again there breaks forth upon the ears of inexperienced youth the alarming information that society is "in a transition state." Every critic, every preacher, every politician, is always saying this. Yet there never was a time when society was not in a "transition state." According to the Genesian legend, Adam discovered this in his day, when, a few weeks after his advent, he found himself outside the gates of Paradise, and all the world and all the creatures in it thrown into a state of unending perturbation and discomfort which has not ceased to this day. The eternal condition of human life is change, and he who is wise learns early to adapt himself to it. As Dr. Arnold said, there is nothing so dangerous as standing still when all the world is moving.
The young are bewildered by being left under the impression that they should learn everything. Whereas all they need is to know thoroughly what their line of duty in life requires them to know. No man can read all the books in the British Museum, were arrangements made for his sleeping there. No one is expected to eat all he finds in the market, but only so much as makes a reasonable meal. Lord Sherbrooke translated from the Greek guiding lines of Homer who said of a learner of his day:—
     "He could not reap, he could not sow,
     Nor was he wise at all:
     For very many arts he knew,
     But badly knew them all."
The conditions of personal advancement can only be learned by observing the steps of those who have succeeded. Disraeli, whose success was the wonder of his time, owed it to following the shrewd maxim that he who wants to advance must make himself necessary to those whom he has the opportunity of serving. This can be done in any station in life by skill, assiduity and trustworthiness.
Practical thoroughness is an essential quality which gives great advantage in life. Spurgeon had a great appreciation of it A servant girl applied to him for a situation on the ground that she "had got religion." "Yes," said the great pulpit orator, "that is a very good thing if it takes a useful turn; but do you sweep under the mats?" he asked, cleanliness being a sign of godliness in the eyes of the sensible preacher.
Cleanliness is possible to the very poorest—walls which have no paper might have whitewash. Children should never see dirt anywhere. They should never come upon it lying out of sight. Fever and death lurk in neglected corners. Children may be in rags, but if they are clean rags and the children are clean, they are, however poor, respectable. When I first went to speak in Glasgow, it was in a solemn old hall, up a wynd. The place was in the Candleriggs. Everybody knows what a dark, clammy, pasty, muddy, depressing thoroughfare is the Candleriggs in wintry weather.

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