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any thing. I can pay as alone attention to anything, or learn anything thing as quick as most any one can, but I lack the energy of will to confine myself down to any thing for hour after hour, or day after day. There is a constitutional difference between Joseph & me. Eliab is still different. I think he has a much more natural talent than either Joseph or I, but I do not think that all the training in the world could ever make him half so great a man as Joseph might have been, with suitable advantages of education. My next door classmate will sit down and bore right into a lesson steady for three, four, or five hours right off without flinching or weariness of mind. If I do the same for one hour, I do well like most every else. But very likely I should get the lesson in me hour that he would in three. Still this iron energy of will, this indefatigable property of mind, with physical constitution to support it, is invaluable. It is the stuff to make great men of. The rational capacity of mind has very little to do with ultimate success. The mind, my mind, is sufficiently capable of cultivation and improvement, indefinitely capable; for success it requires only the power of application and perseverance of mind, supported by a sufficient physical constitution. I don't think I am naturally deficient in any of these things, and I believe that with an equal chance and without disadvantages I might have been able to take a rank in any class, but entering here as I did , with my whole prefatory studies four years old, and two thirds forgot, and the studies of the freshman year half learned in 4 or 5 months, I could not expect to be a very thorough scholar, or to take rank, even if I tried to, over those with so many a advantage over me. Still I believe my standing in my class, which is a very good one, is respectable. I am certainly among the best Mathematicians in the class and not very decidedly inferior in any thing. Not to say though that I should not be if others were what they might be. There are very few college students who make much improvement of their advantage here as they might, in fact it is not to be expected that they would where they can get along so easily with so little study as by can have if they chose. It is not very often that the really talented fellows, and there are many such here, take the rank, or the heist stand in college. It is the inferior minds usually, but patient, persevering, frequently unpopular with their mates sometimes one in a thousand, impelled by a principle of duty, usually ambition. I can't say that I should not like right well to take a junior part. or an oration when I graduate, if I ever do, or be President or Orator of a college society next year, but still I hardly think that my ambition will ever have a great effect upon my efforts, or influence my exertions in any great degree I can in that it does others. I suppose it ought to merit. I hope you will write oftener, tell me what is going on, you do not know how much good it does me to hear from home. Tell me what to do, what shall I do this fall. I suppose I must stay out if I can get a school anywhere. You don't know how much I hate to though or how much good it would do me to stay, in many respects. if I had, or could get 100 dolls nothing would keep me out, only these two years now that I have to stay. With the hundred dolls help I do believe I could get through with my health and Gods blessing