time to make his best better. It is with some such spirit as this that a boy should go at his studies. He will never do very well unless he learns concentrated hard work. He will never increase his ability to think as he should unless he tries to do well a good many things he doesn't like to do.
If possible, have an object in view. Set some intellectual goal for yourself, and do not be satisfied until you have reached that point or gone beyond it. You will find, usually, that you can attain success more easily in some directions than in others. Do not be satisfied to be commonplace or merely to pass, but make up your mind that in some line or other you are going to be as good as the best at least, for your success in any one line of endeavor will always give you more likelihood of success in anything else which you may undertake. The boy who gets away creditably with a difficult course in mathematics or with an examination in Vergil which he finds distasteful, will be so much the better able through self-confidence and persistence to win the girl of his choice or to make a creditable record at track. As you do well the intellectual tasks which are set for you today, you will accomplish more easily and more accurately the duties which are laid upon you twenty years from now, no matter what these duties may be.
By far the largest percentage of poor work or of failures in high school comes not from the fact that boys are stupid or badly prepared in the elementary schools, or be-
