THE POWER OP USING KNOWLEDGE. 15 



usually spent by boys of his age in purposeless sport, to 

 the construction of mechanical models and to artistic work. 

 His thirst for knowledge and remarkable facility of 

 comprehension rendered study an intense pleasure. Almost 

 every branch of science was eagerly entered upon with a 

 passionate love of learning seldom exhibited in one so young. 

 It was this broad and varied field of elementary knowledge, 

 acquired in the springtime of life, which formed the basis of 

 later studies prolific in practical results. The mind 

 naturally powerful and endowed with a strangely sensitive 

 delicacy of perception was happily trained in habits of 

 arrangement and order, so that knowledge, instead of being 

 a chaos of facts, was to him like a carefully-ordered store- 

 house, with every article classified and ready for immediate 

 use. " Successful men," says Carlyle, " possess the great 

 gift of a methodical, well-balanced, arranging mind ; they are 

 men who cannot work in disorder, but will have things 

 straight and know all the details, which enables them 

 so to arrange the machinery of their affairs that they are 

 fully cognizant alike of its strength, weakness, and capa- 

 bility, and they judiciously and discreetly exercise all its 

 power to the uttermost." Every day of our lives we see 

 the practical evidence of these truths. It is not the mere 

 book-worm who achieves anything for the good of his fellow 

 men the mere accumulation of knowledge is as useless as 



