SOME LATE BEGINNERS.

New Zealand Times, Volume LIV, Issue 9867, 25 March 1893, Page 5 (Supplement)

SOME LATE BEGINNERS.

II is a great thing for boys to find out as early in life as they can what they expect to do when they become men, and to direct their energies as far as may be towards fitting themselves thoroughly for their lifework. Boys need not bo discouraged, however, if they find it impossible to do this. Many great successes have been made by men whoso bent in certain directions was not known until very late in Cato did not learn Greek until he was eighty years of age, nor did I’lutarch begin the study of Latin uniil well nigh as old. Theophrastus began his greatest work at the age of 1)0, and Colbert, the famous French statesman, returned at the age of (10 to the study of law. Sir Henry Spelman did not begin studying the sciences until he was 50 years of age, and yet had accomplished much before he died ; and in Franco a certain Marquis de Saint Au'aire did not discover that he was a poet until he had passed his 70th year. Socrates learned to play on musical instruments in his old ago ; and an Italian writer, Ludovico Monaldesoo by name, wrote the memoirs of his times when he had attained the extraordinary age of 115 years.