ET me tell you, my dear lads, some of the things I would do if I were a boy

again, some of the too-often neglected acts I would strive to accomplish if it were in my power to begin all over anew.

This paper was written expressly for you young fellows who are beginning to think for yourselves, and are not averse to hearing what an old boy, who loves you, has to say to his younger fellowstudents.

When we are no longer young we look back and see where we might have done better and learned more, and the things we have neglected rise up

and mortify us every day of our lives. May I enumerate some of the important matters, large and small, that, if I were a boy again, I would be more particular about?

I think I would learn to use my left hand just as freely as my right one, so that, if anything happened to lame either of them, the other would. be all ready to write and "handle things," just as if nothing had occurred. There is no reason in the world why both hands should not be educated alike. A little practice would soon render one set of fingers just as expert as the other; and I have known people who never thought, when a thing was to be done, which particular hand ought to do it, but the hand nearest the object took hold of it and did the office desired.

I would accustom myself to go about in the dark, and not be obliged to have a lamp or candle on every occasion. Too many of us are slaves to the daylight, and decline to move forward an inch unless everything is visible. One of the most cheerful persons I ever knew was a blind old man,

who had lost his sight by an accident at sea during his early manhood. He went everywhere, and could find things more easily than I could. When his wife wanted a spool of cotton, or a pair of scissors from up stairs, the gallant old gentleman went without saying a word, and brought it. He never asked any one to reach him this or that object, but seemed to have the instinct of knowing just where it was and how to get at it.

Surprised at his power of finding things, I asked him one day for an explanation; and he told me that, when he was a boy on board a vessel, it occurred to him that he might some time or other be deprived of sight, and he resolved to begin early in life to rely more on a sense of feeling than he had ever done before. And so he used to wander, by way of practice, all over the ship in black midnight, going down below, and climbing around anywhere and everywhere, that he might, in case of blindness, not become wholly helpless and of no account in the world. In this way he had educated himself to do without eyes when it became his lot to live a sightless man.

I would learn the art of using tools of various sorts. I think I would insist on learning some trade, even if I knew there would be no occasion to follow it when I grew up.

What a pleasure it is in after-life to be able to make something, as the saying is! to construct a neat box to hold one's pen and paper; or a pretty cabinet for a sister's library; or to frame a favorite engraving for a Christmas present to a dear, kind mother. What a loss not to know how to mend a chair that refuses to stand up strong only because it needs a few tacks and a bit of leather here and there! Some of us cannot even drive a nail straight; and, should we attempt to saw off an obtrusive piece of wood, ten to one we should lose a finger in the operation.

It is a pleasant relaxation from books and study to work an hour every day in a tool-shop; and my friend, the learned and lovable Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes, finds such a comfort in “mending things," when his active brain needs repose, that he sometimes breaks a piece of furniture on purpose that he may have the relief of putting it