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In a class below me at Phillips-Exeter Academy was a boy who had just entered the school. His great ambition was to play football, and he came to the practise day after day. His abilities, however, were apparently not on the same plane with his ambitions, and his work was so ridiculously poor that he became the laughing stock of the whole school. That, however, troubled him not at all.
"Have you learned that fame is an icy shadow? that gratified ambition cannot make you happy? Do you love me?" "Yes." "Better than teaching school and writing learned articles?" "Rather better, I believe, sir." "Beulah!" "Well, sir." "You have changed in many things since we parted, nearly six years ago!" "Yes; I thank God, I am changed.
But we trust that some few observations, in vindication of these unfortunate people, will neither be unacceptable nor improper. How then shall we begin the refutation? Shall we say with Seneca, who saw many of the slaves in question, "What is a knight, or a libertine, or a slave? Are they not names, assumed either from injury or ambition?"
The young girl in question, whose father is perhaps a hardworking doctor or business man, at home lives simply enough; but sacrifices are made to send her to a fashionable school, where her companions fill her ears with stories of their motors, trips to Europe, and the balls they attend during the vacations. She becomes inoculated with the poison of social ambition before she comes out.
Much was told of the strange and horrible acts of blood by which men, setting nature and humanity alike at defiance, had, for the thirst of revenge, the lust of gold, or the cravings of irregular ambition, broken into the tabernacle of life. Yet more surprising and mysterious tales were recounted of the mode in which such deeds of blood had come to be discovered and revenged.
But in historically canonizing on earth the condemned below, and lifting up and lauding the illustrious damned, we do but make examples of wickedness; and call upon ambition to do some great iniquity, and be sure of fame.
One can imagine the breathless excitement and delight of the long ride, with the fresh breeze in his face, and one of the richest valleys in Scotland coming softly into sight in the midst of the morning, as the young King full of spirit, ambition, and all the rising impulses of manhood, left behind him the gentle shadow of the Lomond hills, and swept round the base of the Ochils towards the castle, high-standing on its rock, where freedom and his crown and all the privileges of royal life and independence were awaiting him.
And then it was the blood of Louis XIII. which Fouquet was sacrificing to the blood of Louis XIII.; it was to a selfish ambition he was sacrificing a noble ambition; to the right of keeping he sacrificed the right of having. The whole extent of his fault was revealed to him at simple sight of the pretender. All that passed in the mind of Fouquet was lost upon the persons present.
"It's my ambition," modestly confessed the little man, watching a second twenty gathered in to the benefit of the house. "But I've only a few minutes more and you do play such a darned small game." "Perhaps I can arrange matters for you," suggested Mr. Penfield. "You'd like the limit removed?" "Not as bad as all that. Make the maximum a hundred, and I'll begin to feel at home."
My great ambition was to learn a profession, and thus to be independent. It is what all boys should aim at. I had originally no particular taste for the sea; but having chosen it, I was determined to be a thorough sailor. How many among my schoolfellows could not make up their minds what to be, or did not seem to think that it was necessary to be something or other.
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