The Art of Money Getting Or, Golden Rules for Making Money

Introduction

In the United States, where we have more land than peo­ple, it is not at all dif­fi­cult for per­sons in good health to make money. In this com­par­a­tively new field there are so many av­enues of suc­cess open, so many vo­ca­tions which are not crowded, that any per­son of ei­ther sex who is will­ing, at least for the time be­ing, to en­gage in any re­spectable oc­cu­pa­tion that of­fers, may find lu­cra­tive em­ploy­ment.

Those who re­ally de­sire to at­tain an in­de­pen­dence, have only to set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in re­gard to any other ob­ject which they wish to ac­com­plish, and the thing is eas­ily done. But how­ever easy it may be found to make money, I have no doubt many of my hear­ers will agree it is the most dif­fi­cult thing in the world to keep it. The road to wealth is, as Dr. Franklin truly says, “as plain as the road to the mill.” It con­sists sim­ply in ex­pend­ing less than we earn; that seems to be a very sim­ple prob­lem. Mr. Mi­caw­ber, one of those happy cre­ations of the ge­nial Dick­ens, puts the case in a strong light when he says that to have an­nual in­come of twenty pounds per an­num, and spend twenty pounds and six­pence, is to be the most mis­er­able of men; whereas, to have an in­come of only twenty pounds, and spend but nine­teen pounds and six­pence is to be the hap­pi­est of mor­tals. Many of my read­ers may say, “we un­der­stand this: this is econ­omy, and we know econ­omy is wealth; we know we can’t eat our cake and keep it also.” Yet I beg to say that per­haps more cases of fail­ure arise from mis­takes on this point than al­most any other. The fact is, many peo­ple think they un­der­stand econ­omy when they re­ally do not.

True econ­omy is mis­ap­pre­hended, and peo­ple go through life with­out prop­erly com­pre­hend­ing what that prin­ci­ple is. One says, “I have an in­come of so much, and here is my neigh­bor who has the same; yet ev­ery year he gets some­thing ahead and I fall short; why is it? I know all about econ­omy.” He thinks he does, but he does not. There are men who think that econ­omy con­sists in sav­ing cheese-par­ings and can­dle-ends, in cut­ting off two pence from the laun­dress’ bill and do­ing all sorts of lit­tle, mean, dirty things. Econ­omy is not mean­ness. The mis­for­tune is, also, that this class of per­sons let their econ­omy ap­ply in only one di­rec­tion. They fancy they are so won­der­fully eco­nom­i­cal in sav­ing a half­penny where they ought to spend twopence, that they think they can af­ford to squan­der in other di­rec­tions. A few years ago, be­fore kerosene oil was dis­cov­ered or thought of, one might stop overnight at al­most any farmer’s house in the agri­cul­tural dis­tricts and get a very good sup­per, but af­ter sup­per he might at­tempt to read in the sit­ting-room, and would find it im­pos­si­ble with the in­ef­fi­cient light of one can­dle. The host­ess, see­ing his dilemma, would say: “It is rather dif­fi­cult to read here evenings; the proverb says, ‘you must have a ship at sea in or­der to be able to burn two can­dles at once;’ we never have an ex­tra can­dle ex­cept on ex­tra oc­ca­sions.” Th­ese ex­tra oc­ca­sions oc­cur, per­haps, twice a year. In this way the good woman saves five, six, or ten dol­lars in that time: but the in­for­ma­tion which might be de­rived from hav­ing the ex­tra light would, of course, far out­weigh a ton of can­dles.

But the trou­ble does not end here. Feel­ing that she is so eco­nom­i­cal in tal­low can­dies, she thinks she can af­ford to go fre­quently to the vil­lage and spend twenty or thirty dol­lars for rib­bons and furbe­lows, many of which are not nec­es­sary. This false con­note may fre­quently be seen in men of busi­ness, and in those in­stances it of­ten runs to writ­ing-pa­per. You find good busi­ness­men who save all the old en­velopes and scraps, and would not tear a new sheet of pa­per, if they could avoid it, for the world. This is all very well; they may in this way save five or ten dol­lars a year, but be­ing so eco­nom­i­cal (only in note pa­per), they think they can af­ford to waste time; to have ex­pen­sive par­ties, and to drive their car­riages. This is an il­lus­tra­tion of Dr. Franklin’s “sav­ing at the spigot and wast­ing at the bung­hole;” “penny wise and pound fool­ish.” Punch in speak­ing of this “one idea” class of peo­ple says, “they are like the man who bought a penny her­ring for his fam­ily’s din­ner and then hired a coach and four to take it home.” I never knew a man to suc­ceed by prac­tis­ing this kind of econ­omy.

True econ­omy con­sists in al­ways mak­ing the in­come ex­ceed the outgo. Wear the old clothes a lit­tle longer if nec­es­sary; dis­pense with the new pair of gloves; mend the old dress: live on plainer food if need be; so that, un­der all cir­cum­stances, un­less some un­fore­seen ac­ci­dent oc­curs, there will be a mar­gin in fa­vor of the in­come. A penny here, and a dol­lar there, placed at in­ter­est, goes on ac­cu­mu­lat­ing, and in this way the de­sired re­sult is at­tained. It re­quires some train­ing, per­haps, to ac­com­plish this econ­omy, but when once used to it, you will find there is more sat­is­fac­tion in ra­tio­nal sav­ing than in ir­ra­tional spend­ing. Here is a recipe which I rec­om­mend: I have found it to work an ex­cel­lent cure for ex­trav­a­gance, and es­pe­cially for mis­taken econ­omy: When you find that you have no sur­plus at the end of the year, and yet have a good in­come, I ad­vise you to take a few sheets of pa­per and form them into a book and mark down ev­ery item of ex­pen­di­ture. Post it ev­ery day or week in two col­umns, one headed “nec­es­saries” or even “com­forts,” and the other headed “lux­u­ries,” and you will find that the lat­ter col­umn will be dou­ble, tre­ble, and fre­quently ten times greater than the for­mer. The real com­forts of life cost but a small por­tion of what most of us can earn. Dr. Franklin says, “it is the eyes of oth­ers and not our own eyes which ruin us. If all the world were blind ex­cept my­self I should not care for fine clothes or fur­ni­ture.” It is the fear of what Mrs. Grundy may say that keeps the noses of many wor­thy fam­i­lies to the grind­stone. In Amer­ica many per­sons like to re­peat “we are all free and equal,” but it is a great mis­take in more senses than one.

That we are born “free and equal” is a glo­ri­ous truth in one sense, yet we are not all born equally rich, and we never shall be. One may say; “there is a man who has an in­come of fifty thou­sand dol­lars per an­num, while I have but one thou­sand dol­lars; I knew that fel­low when he was poor like my­self; now he is rich and thinks he is bet­ter than I am; I will show him that I am as good as he is; I will go and buy a horse and buggy; no, I can­not do that, but I will go and hire one and ride this af­ter­noon on the same road that he does, and thus prove to him that I am as good as he is.”

My friend, you need not take that trou­ble; you can eas­ily prove that you are “as good as he is;” you have only to be­have as well as he does; but you can­not make any­body be­lieve that you are rich as he is. Be­sides, if you put on these “airs,” and waste your time and spend your money, your poor wife will be obliged to scrub her fin­gers off at home, and buy her tea two ounces at a time, and ev­ery­thing else in pro­por­tion, in or­der that you may keep up “ap­pear­ances,” and, af­ter all, de­ceive no­body. On the other hand, Mrs. Smith may say that her next-door neigh­bor mar­ried John­son for his money, and “ev­ery­body says so.” She has a nice one-thou­sand dol­lar camel’s hair shawl, and she will make Smith get her an im­i­ta­tion one, and she will sit in a pew right next to her neigh­bor in church, in or­der to prove that she is her equal.

My good woman, you will not get ahead in the world, if your van­ity and envy thus take the lead. In this coun­try, where we be­lieve the ma­jor­ity ought to rule, we ig­nore that prin­ci­ple in re­gard to fash­ion, and let a hand­ful of peo­ple, call­ing them­selves the aris­toc­racy, run up a false stan­dard of per­fec­tion, and in en­deav­or­ing to rise to that stan­dard, we con­stantly keep our­selves poor; all the time dig­ging away for the sake of out­side ap­pear­ances. How much wiser to be a “law unto our­selves” and say, “we will reg­u­late our outgo by our in­come, and lay up some­thing for a rainy day.” Peo­ple ought to be as sen­si­ble on the sub­ject of money-get­ting as on any other sub­ject. Like causes pro­duces like ef­fects. You can­not ac­cu­mu­late a for­tune by tak­ing the road that leads to poverty. It needs no prophet to tell us that those who live fully up to their means, with­out any thought of a re­verse in this life, can never at­tain a pe­cu­niary in­de­pen­dence.

Men and women ac­cus­tomed to grat­ify ev­ery whim and caprice, will find it hard, at first, to cut down their var­i­ous un­nec­es­sary ex­penses, and will feel it a great self-de­nial to live in a smaller house than they have been ac­cus­tomed to, with less ex­pen­sive fur­ni­ture, less com­pany, less costly cloth­ing, fewer ser­vants, a less num­ber of balls, par­ties, the­ater-go­ings, car­riage-rid­ings, plea­sure ex­cur­sions, cigar-smok­ings, liquor-drink­ings, and other ex­trav­a­gances; but, af­ter all, if they will try the plan of lay­ing by a “nest-egg,” or, in other words, a small sum of money, at in­ter­est or ju­di­ciously in­vested in land, they will be sur­prised at the plea­sure to be de­rived from con­stantly adding to their lit­tle “pile,” as well as from all the eco­nom­i­cal habits which are en­gen­dered by this course.

The old suit of clothes, and the old bon­net and dress, will an­swer for an­other sea­son; the Cro­ton or spring wa­ter taste bet­ter than cham­pagne; a cold bath and a brisk walk will prove more ex­hil­a­rat­ing than a ride in the finest coach; a so­cial chat, an evening’s read­ing in the fam­ily cir­cle, or an hour’s play of “hunt the slip­per” and “blind man’s buff” will be far more pleas­ant than a fifty or five hun­dred dol­lar party, when the re­flec­tion on the dif­fer­ence in cost is in­dulged in by those who be­gin to know the plea­sures of sav­ing. Thou­sands of men are kept poor, and tens of thou­sands are made so af­ter they have ac­quired quite suf­fi­cient to sup­port them well through life, in con­se­quence of lay­ing their plans of liv­ing on too broad a plat­form. Some fam­i­lies ex­pend twenty thou­sand dol­lars per an­num, and some much more, and would scarcely know how to live on less, while oth­ers se­cure more solid en­joy­ment fre­quently on a twen­ti­eth part of that amount. Pros­per­ity is a more se­vere or­deal than ad­ver­sity, es­pe­cially sud­den pros­per­ity. “Easy come, easy go,” is an old and true proverb. A spirit of pride and van­ity, when per­mit­ted to have full sway, is the undy­ing canker­worm which gnaws the very vi­tals of a man’s worldly pos­ses­sions, let them be small or great, hun­dreds, or mil­lions. Many per­sons, as they be­gin to pros­per, im­me­di­ately ex­pand their ideas and com­mence ex­pend­ing for lux­u­ries, un­til in a short time their ex­penses swal­low up their in­come, and they be­come ru­ined in their ridicu­lous at­tempts to keep up ap­pear­ances, and make a “sen­sa­tion.”

I know a gen­tle­man of for­tune who says, that when he first be­gan to pros­per, his wife would have a new and el­e­gant sofa. “That sofa,” he says, “cost me thirty thou­sand dol­lars!” When the sofa reached the house, it was found nec­es­sary to get chairs to match; then side­boards, car­pets and ta­bles “to cor­re­spond” with them, and so on through the en­tire stock of fur­ni­ture; when at last it was found that the house it­self was quite too small and old-fash­ioned for the fur­ni­ture, and a new one was built to cor­re­spond with the new pur­chases; “thus,” added my friend, “sum­ming up an out­lay of thirty thou­sand dol­lars, caused by that sin­gle sofa, and sad­dling on me, in the shape of ser­vants, equipage, and the nec­es­sary ex­penses at­ten­dant upon keep­ing up a fine ‘es­tab­lish­ment,’ a yearly out­lay of eleven thou­sand dol­lars, and a tight pinch at that: whereas, ten years ago, we lived with much more real com­fort, be­cause with much less care, on as many hun­dreds. The truth is,” he con­tin­ued, “that sofa would have brought me to in­evitable bank­ruptcy, had not a most un­ex­am­pled ti­tle to pros­per­ity kept me above it, and had I not checked the nat­u­ral de­sire to ‘cut a dash.’ ”

The foun­da­tion of suc­cess in life is good health: that is the sub­stra­tum of for­tune; it is also the ba­sis of hap­pi­ness. A per­son can­not ac­cu­mu­late a for­tune very well when he is sick. He has no am­bi­tion; no in­cen­tive; no force. Of course, there are those who have bad health and can­not help it: you can­not ex­pect that such per­sons can ac­cu­mu­late wealth, but there are a great many in poor health who need not be so.

If, then, sound health is the foun­da­tion of suc­cess and hap­pi­ness in life, how im­por­tant it is that we should study the laws of health, which is but an­other ex­pres­sion for the laws of na­ture! The nearer we keep to the laws of na­ture, the nearer we are to good health, and yet how many per­sons there are who pay no at­ten­tion to nat­u­ral laws, but ab­so­lutely trans­gress them, even against their own nat­u­ral in­cli­na­tion. We ought to know that the “sin of ig­no­rance” is never winked at in re­gard to the vi­o­la­tion of na­ture’s laws; their in­frac­tion al­ways brings the penalty. A child may thrust its fin­ger into the flames with­out know­ing it will burn, and so suf­fers, re­pen­tance, even, will not stop the smart. Many of our an­ces­tors knew very lit­tle about the prin­ci­ple of ven­ti­la­tion. They did not know much about oxy­gen, what­ever other “gin” they might have been ac­quainted with; and con­se­quently they built their houses with lit­tle seven-by-nine feet bed­rooms, and these good old pi­ous Pu­ri­tans would lock them­selves up in one of these cells, say their prayers and go to bed. In the morn­ing they would de­voutly re­turn thanks for the “preser­va­tion of their lives,” dur­ing the night, and no­body had bet­ter rea­son to be thank­ful. Prob­a­bly some big crack in the win­dow, or in the door, let in a lit­tle fresh air, and thus saved them.

Many per­sons know­ingly vi­o­late the laws of na­ture against their bet­ter im­pulses, for the sake of fash­ion. For in­stance, there is one thing that noth­ing liv­ing ex­cept a vile worm ever nat­u­rally loved, and that is to­bacco; yet how many per­sons there are who de­lib­er­ately train an un­nat­u­ral ap­petite, and over­come this im­planted aver­sion for to­bacco, to such a de­gree that they get to love it. They have got hold of a poi­sonous, filthy weed, or rather that takes a firm hold of them. Here are mar­ried men who run about spit­ting to­bacco juice on the car­pet and floors, and some­times even upon their wives be­sides. They do not kick their wives out of doors like drunken men, but their wives, I have no doubt, of­ten wish they were out­side of the house. Another per­ilous fea­ture is that this ar­ti­fi­cial ap­petite, like jeal­ousy, “grows by what it feeds on;” when you love that which is un­nat­u­ral, a stronger ap­petite is cre­ated for the hurt­ful thing than the nat­u­ral de­sire for what is harm­less. There is an old proverb which says that “habit is sec­ond na­ture,” but an ar­ti­fi­cial habit is stronger than na­ture. Take for in­stance, an old to­bacco-chewer; his love for the “quid” is stronger than his love for any par­tic­u­lar kind of food. He can give up roast beef eas­ier than give up the weed.

Young lads re­gret that they are not men; they would like to go to bed boys and wake up men; and to ac­com­plish this they copy the bad habits of their se­niors. Lit­tle Tommy and Johnny see their fa­thers or un­cles smoke a pipe, and they say, “If I could only do that, I would be a man too; un­cle John has gone out and left his pipe of to­bacco, let us try it.” They take a match and light it, and then puff away. “We will learn to smoke; do you like it Johnny?” That lad dole­fully replies: “Not very much; it tastes bit­ter;” by and by he grows pale, but he per­sists and he soon of­fers up a sac­ri­fice on the al­tar of fash­ion; but the boys stick to it and per­se­vere un­til at last they con­quer their nat­u­ral ap­petites and be­come the vic­tims of ac­quired tastes.

I speak “by the book,” for I have no­ticed its ef­fects on my­self, hav­ing gone so far as to smoke ten or fif­teen cigars a day; al­though I have not used the weed dur­ing the last four­teen years, and never shall again. The more a man smokes, the more he craves smok­ing; the last cigar smoked sim­ply ex­cites the de­sire for an­other, and so on in­ces­santly.

Take the to­bacco-chewer. In the morn­ing, when he gets up, he puts a quid in his mouth and keeps it there all day, never tak­ing it out ex­cept to ex­change it for a fresh one, or when he is go­ing to eat; oh! yes, at in­ter­vals dur­ing the day and evening, many a chewer takes out the quid and holds it in his hand long enough to take a drink, and then pop it goes back again. This sim­ply proves that the ap­petite for rum is even stronger than that for to­bacco. When the to­bacco-chewer goes to your coun­try seat and you show him your grap­ery and fruit house, and the beau­ties of your gar­den, when you of­fer him some fresh, ripe fruit, and say, “My friend, I have got here the most de­li­cious ap­ples, and pears, and peaches, and apri­cots; I have im­ported them from Spain, France and Italy—just see those lus­cious grapes; there is noth­ing more de­li­cious nor more healthy than ripe fruit, so help your­self; I want to see you de­light your­self with these things;” he will roll the dear quid un­der his tongue and an­swer, “No, I thank you, I have got to­bacco in my mouth.” His palate has be­come nar­co­tized by the nox­ious weed, and he has lost, in a great mea­sure, the del­i­cate and en­vi­able taste for fruits. This shows what ex­pen­sive, use­less and in­ju­ri­ous habits men will get into. I speak from ex­pe­ri­ence. I have smoked un­til I trem­bled like an as­pen leaf, the blood rushed to my head, and I had a pal­pi­ta­tion of the heart which I thought was heart dis­ease, till I was al­most killed with fright. When I con­sulted my physi­cian, he said “break off to­bacco us­ing.” I was not only in­jur­ing my health and spend­ing a great deal of money, but I was set­ting a bad ex­am­ple. I obeyed his coun­sel. No young man in the world ever looked so beau­ti­ful, as he thought he did, be­hind a fif­teen cent cigar or a meer­schaum!

Th­ese re­marks ap­ply with ten­fold force to the use of in­tox­i­cat­ing drinks. To make money, re­quires a clear brain. A man has got to see that two and two make four; he must lay all his plans with re­flec­tion and fore­thought, and closely ex­am­ine all the de­tails and the ins and outs of busi­ness. As no man can suc­ceed in busi­ness un­less he has a brain to en­able him to lay his plans, and rea­son to guide him in their ex­e­cu­tion, so, no mat­ter how boun­ti­fully a man may be blessed with in­tel­li­gence, if the brain is mud­dled, and his judg­ment warped by in­tox­i­cat­ing drinks, it is im­pos­si­ble for him to carry on busi­ness suc­cess­fully. How many good op­por­tu­ni­ties have passed, never to re­turn, while a man was sip­ping a “so­cial glass,” with his friend! How many fool­ish bar­gains have been made un­der the in­flu­ence of the “nervine,” which tem­po­rar­ily makes its vic­tim think he is rich. How many im­por­tant chances have been put off un­til to­mor­row, and then for­ever, be­cause the wine cup has thrown the sys­tem into a state of las­si­tude, neu­tral­iz­ing the en­er­gies so es­sen­tial to suc­cess in busi­ness. Ver­ily, “wine is a mocker.” The use of in­tox­i­cat­ing drinks as a bev­er­age, is as much an in­fat­u­a­tion, as is the smok­ing of opium by the Chi­nese, and the for­mer is quite as de­struc­tive to the suc­cess of the busi­ness man as the lat­ter. It is an un­mit­i­gated evil, ut­terly in­de­fen­si­ble in the light of phi­los­o­phy; re­li­gion or good sense. It is the par­ent of nearly ev­ery other evil in our coun­try.

Don’t Mistake Your Vocation

The safest plan, and the one most sure of suc­cess for the young man start­ing in life, is to se­lect the vo­ca­tion which is most con­ge­nial to his tastes. Par­ents and guardians are of­ten quite too neg­li­gent in re­gard to this. It very com­mon for a fa­ther to say, for ex­am­ple: “I have five boys. I will make Billy a cler­gy­man; John a lawyer; Tom a doc­tor, and Dick a farmer.” He then goes into town and looks about to see what he will do with Sammy. He re­turns home and says “Sammy, I see watch-mak­ing is a nice gen­teel busi­ness; I think I will make you a gold­smith.” He does this, re­gard­less of Sam’s nat­u­ral in­cli­na­tions, or ge­nius.

We are all, no doubt, born for a wise pur­pose. There is as much di­ver­sity in our brains as in our coun­te­nances. Some are born nat­u­ral me­chan­ics, while some have great aver­sion to ma­chin­ery. Let a dozen boys of ten years get to­gether, and you will soon ob­serve two or three are “whit­tling” out some in­ge­nious de­vice; work­ing with locks or com­pli­cated ma­chin­ery. When they were but five years old, their fa­ther could find no toy to please them like a puz­zle. They are nat­u­ral me­chan­ics; but the other eight or nine boys have dif­fer­ent ap­ti­tudes. I be­long to the lat­ter class; I never had the slight­est love for mech­a­nism; on the con­trary, I have a sort of ab­hor­rence for com­pli­cated ma­chin­ery. I never had in­ge­nu­ity enough to whit­tle a cider tap so it would not leak. I never could make a pen that I could write with, or un­der­stand the prin­ci­ple of a steam en­gine. If a man was to take such a boy as I was, and at­tempt to make a watch­maker of him, the boy might, af­ter an ap­pren­tice­ship of five or seven years, be able to take apart and put to­gether a watch; but all through life he would be work­ing up hill and seiz­ing ev­ery ex­cuse for leav­ing his work and idling away his time. Watch­mak­ing is re­pul­sive to him.

Un­less a man en­ters upon the vo­ca­tion in­tended for him by na­ture, and best suited to his pe­cu­liar ge­nius, he can­not suc­ceed. I am glad to be­lieve that the ma­jor­ity of per­sons do find their right vo­ca­tion. Yet we see many who have mis­taken their call­ing, from the black­smith up (or down) to the cler­gy­man. You will see, for in­stance, that ex­tra­or­di­nary lin­guist the “learned black­smith,” who ought to have been a teacher of lan­guages; and you may have seen lawyers, doc­tors and cler­gy­men who were bet­ter fit­ted by na­ture for the anvil or the lap­stone.

Select the Right Location

After se­cur­ing the right vo­ca­tion, you must be care­ful to se­lect the proper lo­ca­tion. You may have been cut out for a ho­tel keeper, and they say it re­quires a ge­nius to “know how to keep a ho­tel.” You might con­duct a ho­tel like clock­work, and pro­vide sat­is­fac­to­rily for five hun­dred guests ev­ery day; yet, if you should lo­cate your house in a small vil­lage where there is no rail­road com­mu­ni­ca­tion or pub­lic travel, the lo­ca­tion would be your ruin. It is equally im­por­tant that you do not com­mence busi­ness where there are al­ready enough to meet all de­mands in the same oc­cu­pa­tion. I re­mem­ber a case which il­lus­trates this sub­ject. When I was in Lon­don in 1858, I was pass­ing down Hol­born with an English friend and came to the “penny shows.” They had im­mense car­toons out­side, por­tray­ing the won­der­ful cu­riosi­ties to be seen “all for a penny.” Be­ing a lit­tle in the “show line” my­self, I said “let us go in here.” We soon found our­selves in the pres­ence of the il­lus­tri­ous show­man, and he proved to be the sharpest man in that line I had ever met. He told us some ex­tra­or­di­nary sto­ries in ref­er­ence to his bearded ladies, his Al­bi­nos, and his Ar­madil­los, which we could hardly be­lieve, but thought it “bet­ter to be­lieve it than look af­ter the proof.” He fi­nally begged to call our at­ten­tion to some wax stat­u­ary, and showed us a lot of the dirt­i­est and filth­i­est wax fig­ures imag­in­able. They looked as if they had not seen wa­ter since the Del­uge.

“What is there so won­der­ful about your stat­u­ary?” I asked.

“I beg you not to speak so satir­i­cally,” he replied, “Sir, these are not Madam Tus­saud’s wax fig­ures, all cov­ered with gilt and tin­sel and im­i­ta­tion di­a­monds, and copied from en­grav­ings and pho­to­graphs. Mine, sir, were taken from life. When­ever you look upon one of those fig­ures, you may con­sider that you are look­ing upon the liv­ing in­di­vid­ual.”

Glanc­ing ca­su­ally at them, I saw one la­beled “Henry VIII,” and feel­ing a lit­tle cu­ri­ous upon see­ing that it looked like Calvin Ed­son, the liv­ing skele­ton, I said: “Do you call that ‘Henry the Eighth?’ ” He replied, “Cer­tainly; sir; it was taken from life at Hamp­ton Court, by spe­cial or­der of his majesty; on such a day.”

He would have given the hour of the day if I had re­sisted; I said, “Every­body knows that Henry VIII was a great stout old king, and that fig­ure is lean and lank; what do you say to that?”

“Why,” he replied, “you would be lean and lank your­self if you sat there as long as he has.”

There was no re­sist­ing such ar­gu­ments. I said to my English friend, “Let us go out; do not tell him who I am; I show the white feather; he beats me.”

He fol­lowed us to the door, and see­ing the rab­ble in the street, he called out, “ladies and gen­tle­men, I beg to draw your at­ten­tion to the re­spectable char­ac­ter of my vis­i­tors,” point­ing to us as we walked away. I called upon him a cou­ple of days af­ter­wards; told him who I was, and said:

“My friend, you are an ex­cel­lent show­man, but you have se­lected a bad lo­ca­tion.”

He replied, “This is true, sir; I feel that all my tal­ents are thrown away; but what can I do?”

“You can go to Amer­ica,” I replied. “You can give full play to your fac­ul­ties over there; you will find plenty of el­bow­room in Amer­ica; I will en­gage you for two years; af­ter that you will be able to go on your own ac­count.”

He ac­cepted my of­fer and re­mained two years in my New York Mu­seum. He then went to New Or­leans and car­ried on a trav­el­ing show busi­ness dur­ing the sum­mer. To­day he is worth sixty thou­sand dol­lars, sim­ply be­cause he se­lected the right vo­ca­tion and also se­cured the proper lo­ca­tion. The old proverb says, “Three re­moves are as bad as a fire,” but when a man is in the fire, it mat­ters but lit­tle how soon or how of­ten he re­moves.

Avoid Debt

Young men start­ing in life should avoid run­ning into debt. There is scarcely any­thing that drags a per­son down like debt. It is a slav­ish po­si­tion to get in, yet we find many a young man, hardly out of his “teens,” run­ning in debt. He meets a chum and says, “Look at this: I have got trusted for a new suit of clothes.” He seems to look upon the clothes as so much given to him; well, it fre­quently is so, but, if he suc­ceeds in pay­ing and then gets trusted again, he is adopt­ing a habit which will keep him in poverty through life. Debt robs a man of his self-re­spect, and makes him al­most de­spise him­self. Grunt­ing and groan­ing and work­ing for what he has eaten up or worn out, and now when he is called upon to pay up, he has noth­ing to show for his money; this is prop­erly termed “work­ing for a dead horse.” I do not speak of mer­chants buy­ing and sell­ing on credit, or of those who buy on credit in or­der to turn the pur­chase to a profit. The old Quaker said to his farmer son, “John, never get trusted; but if thee gets trusted for any­thing, let it be for ‘ma­nure,’ be­cause that will help thee pay it back again.”

Mr. Beecher ad­vised young men to get in debt if they could to a small amount in the pur­chase of land, in the coun­try dis­tricts. “If a young man,” he says, “will only get in debt for some land and then get mar­ried, these two things will keep him straight, or noth­ing will.” This may be safe to a lim­ited ex­tent, but get­ting in debt for what you eat and drink and wear is to be avoided. Some fam­i­lies have a fool­ish habit of get­ting credit at “the stores,” and thus fre­quently pur­chase many things which might have been dis­pensed with.

It is all very well to say; “I have got trusted for sixty days, and if I don’t have the money the cred­i­tor will think noth­ing about it.” There is no class of peo­ple in the world, who have such good mem­o­ries as cred­i­tors. When the sixty days run out, you will have to pay. If you do not pay, you will break your prom­ise, and prob­a­bly re­sort to a false­hood. You may make some ex­cuse or get in debt else­where to pay it, but that only in­volves you the deeper.

A good-look­ing, lazy young fel­low, was the ap­pren­tice boy, Ho­ra­tio. His em­ployer said, “Ho­ra­tio, did you ever see a snail?”

“I—think—I—have,” he drawled out.

“You must have met him then, for I am sure you never over­took one,” said the “boss.” Your cred­i­tor will meet you or over­take you and say, “Now, my young friend, you agreed to pay me; you have not done it, you must give me your note.” You give the note on in­ter­est and it com­mences work­ing against you; “it is a dead horse.” The cred­i­tor goes to bed at night and wakes up in the morn­ing bet­ter off than when he re­tired to bed, be­cause his in­ter­est has in­creased dur­ing the night, but you grow poorer while you are sleep­ing, for the in­ter­est is ac­cu­mu­lat­ing against you.

Money is in some re­spects like fire; it is a very ex­cel­lent ser­vant but a ter­ri­ble mas­ter. When you have it mas­ter­ing you; when in­ter­est is con­stantly pil­ing up against you, it will keep you down in the worst kind of slav­ery. But let money work for you, and you have the most de­voted ser­vant in the world. It is no “eye-ser­vant.” There is noth­ing an­i­mate or inan­i­mate that will work so faith­fully as money when placed at in­ter­est, well se­cured. It works night and day, and in wet or dry weather.

I was born in the blue-law State of Con­necti­cut, where the old Pu­ri­tans had laws so rigid that it was said, “they fined a man for kiss­ing his wife on Sun­day.” Yet these rich old Pu­ri­tans would have thou­sands of dol­lars at in­ter­est, and on Satur­day night would be worth a cer­tain amount; on Sun­day they would go to church and per­form all the du­ties of a Chris­tian. On wak­ing up on Mon­day morn­ing, they would find them­selves con­sid­er­ably richer than the Satur­day night pre­vi­ous, sim­ply be­cause their money placed at in­ter­est had worked faith­fully for them all day Sun­day, ac­cord­ing to law!

Do not let it work against you; if you do there is no chance for suc­cess in life so far as money is con­cerned. John Ran­dolph, the ec­cen­tric Vir­ginian, once ex­claimed in Congress, “Mr. Speaker, I have dis­cov­ered the philoso­pher’s stone: pay as you go.” This is, in­deed, nearer to the philoso­pher’s stone than any al­chemist has ever yet ar­rived.

Persevere

When a man is in the right path, he must per­se­vere. I speak of this be­cause there are some per­sons who are “born tired;” nat­u­rally lazy and pos­sess­ing no self-re­liance and no per­se­ver­ance. But they can cul­ti­vate these qual­i­ties, as Davy Crock­ett said:

“This thing re­mem­ber, when I am dead:
Be sure you are right, then go ahead.”

It is this go-ahea­di­tive­ness, this de­ter­mi­na­tion not to let the “hor­rors” or the “blues” take pos­ses­sion of you, so as to make you re­lax your en­er­gies in the strug­gle for in­de­pen­dence, which you must cul­ti­vate.

How many have al­most reached the goal of their am­bi­tion, but, los­ing faith in them­selves, have re­laxed their en­er­gies, and the golden prize has been lost for­ever.

It is, no doubt, of­ten true, as Shake­speare says:

“There is a tide in the af­fairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to for­tune.”

If you hes­i­tate, some bolder hand will stretch out be­fore you and get the prize. Re­mem­ber the proverb of Solomon: “He be­cometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; but the hand of the dili­gent maketh rich.”

Per­se­ver­ance is some­times but an­other word for self-re­liance. Many per­sons nat­u­rally look on the dark side of life, and bor­row trou­ble. They are born so. Then they ask for ad­vice, and they will be gov­erned by one wind and blown by an­other, and can­not rely upon them­selves. Un­til you can get so that you can rely upon your­self, you need not ex­pect to suc­ceed.

I have known men, per­son­ally, who have met with pe­cu­niary re­verses, and ab­so­lutely com­mit­ted sui­cide, be­cause they thought they could never over­come their mis­for­tune. But I have known oth­ers who have met more se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, and have bridged them over by sim­ple per­se­ver­ance, aided by a firm be­lief that they were do­ing justly, and that Prov­i­dence would “over­come evil with good.” You will see this il­lus­trated in any sphere of life.

Take two gen­er­als; both un­der­stand mil­i­tary tac­tics, both ed­u­cated at West Point, if you please, both equally gifted; yet one, hav­ing this prin­ci­ple of per­se­ver­ance, and the other lack­ing it, the for­mer will suc­ceed in his pro­fes­sion, while the lat­ter will fail. One may hear the cry, “the en­emy are com­ing, and they have got can­non.”

“Got can­non?” says the hes­i­tat­ing gen­eral.

“Yes.”

“Then halt ev­ery man.”

He wants time to re­flect; his hes­i­ta­tion is his ruin; the en­emy passes un­mo­lested, or over­whelms him; while on the other hand, the gen­eral of pluck, per­se­ver­ance and self-re­liance, goes into bat­tle with a will, and, amid the clash of arms, the boom­ing of can­non, the shrieks of the wounded, and the moans of the dy­ing, you will see this man per­se­ver­ing, go­ing on, cut­ting and slash­ing his way through with un­wa­ver­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion, in­spir­ing his sol­diers to deeds of for­ti­tude, valor, and tri­umph.

Whatever You Do, Do It With All Your Might

Work at it, if nec­es­sary, early and late, in sea­son and out of sea­son, not leav­ing a stone un­turned, and never de­fer­ring for a sin­gle hour that which can be done just as well now. The old proverb is full of truth and mean­ing, “What­ever is worth do­ing at all, is worth do­ing well.” Many a man ac­quires a for­tune by do­ing his busi­ness thor­oughly, while his neigh­bor re­mains poor for life, be­cause he only half does it. Am­bi­tion, en­ergy, in­dus­try, per­se­ver­ance, are in­dis­pens­able req­ui­sites for suc­cess in busi­ness.

For­tune al­ways fa­vors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help him­self. It won’t do to spend your time like Mr. Mi­caw­ber, in wait­ing for some­thing to “turn up.” To such men one of two things usu­ally “turns up:” the poor­house or the jail; for idle­ness breeds bad habits, and clothes a man in rags. The poor spend­thrift vagabond says to a rich man:

“I have dis­cov­ered there is enough money in the world for all of us, if it was equally di­vided; this must be done, and we shall all be happy to­gether.”

“But,” was the re­sponse, “if ev­ery­body was like you, it would be spent in two months, and what would you do then?”

“Oh! di­vide again; keep di­vid­ing, of course!”

I was re­cently read­ing in a Lon­don pa­per an ac­count of a like philo­sophic pau­per who was kicked out of a cheap board­ing­house be­cause he could not pay his bill, but he had a roll of pa­pers stick­ing out of his coat pocket, which, upon ex­am­i­na­tion, proved to be his plan for pay­ing off the na­tional debt of Eng­land with­out the aid of a penny. Peo­ple have got to do as Cromwell said: “not only trust in Prov­i­dence, but keep the pow­der dry.” Do your part of the work, or you can­not suc­ceed. Ma­homet, one night, while en­camp­ing in the desert, over­heard one of his fa­tigued fol­low­ers re­mark: “I will loose my camel, and trust it to God!” “No, no, not so,” said the prophet, “tie thy camel, and trust it to God!” Do all you can for your­selves, and then trust to Prov­i­dence, or luck, or what­ever you please to call it, for the rest.

Depend Upon Your Own Personal Exertions

The eye of the em­ployer is of­ten worth more than the hands of a dozen em­ploy­ees. In the na­ture of things, an agent can­not be so faith­ful to his em­ployer as to him­self. Many who are em­ploy­ers will call to mind in­stances where the best em­ploy­ees have over­looked im­por­tant points which could not have es­caped their own ob­ser­va­tion as a pro­pri­etor. No man has a right to ex­pect to suc­ceed in life un­less he un­der­stands his busi­ness, and no­body can un­der­stand his busi­ness thor­oughly un­less he learns it by per­sonal ap­pli­ca­tion and ex­pe­ri­ence. A man may be a man­u­fac­turer: he has got to learn the many de­tails of his busi­ness per­son­ally; he will learn some­thing ev­ery day, and he will find he will make mis­takes nearly ev­ery day. And these very mis­takes are helps to him in the way of ex­pe­ri­ences if he but heeds them. He will be like the Yan­kee tin-ped­dler, who, hav­ing been cheated as to qual­ity in the pur­chase of his mer­chan­dise, said: “All right, there’s a lit­tle in­for­ma­tion to be gained ev­ery day; I will never be cheated in that way again.” Thus a man buys his ex­pe­ri­ence, and it is the best kind if not pur­chased at too dear a rate.

I hold that ev­ery man should, like Cu­vier, the French nat­u­ral­ist, thor­oughly know his busi­ness. So pro­fi­cient was he in the study of nat­u­ral his­tory, that you might bring to him the bone, or even a sec­tion of a bone of an an­i­mal which he had never seen de­scribed, and, rea­son­ing from anal­ogy, he would be able to draw a pic­ture of the ob­ject from which the bone had been taken. On one oc­ca­sion his stu­dents at­tempted to de­ceive him. They rolled one of their num­ber in a cow skin and put him un­der the pro­fes­sor’s ta­ble as a new spec­i­men. When the philoso­pher came into the room, some of the stu­dents asked him what an­i­mal it was. Sud­denly the an­i­mal said, “I am the devil and I am go­ing to eat you.” It was but nat­u­ral that Cu­vier should de­sire to clas­sify this crea­ture, and ex­am­in­ing it in­tently, he said:

“Di­vided hoof; graminiv­o­rous! It can­not be done.”

He knew that an an­i­mal with a split hoof must live upon grass and grain, or other kind of veg­e­ta­tion, and would not be in­clined to eat flesh, dead or alive, so he con­sid­ered him­self per­fectly safe. The pos­ses­sion of a per­fect knowl­edge of your busi­ness is an ab­so­lute ne­ces­sity in or­der to in­sure suc­cess.

Among the max­ims of the el­der Roth­schild was one, all ap­par­ent para­dox: “Be cau­tious and bold.” This seems to be a con­tra­dic­tion in terms, but it is not, and there is great wis­dom in the maxim. It is, in fact, a con­densed state­ment of what I have al­ready said. It is to say; “you must ex­er­cise your cau­tion in lay­ing your plans, but be bold in car­ry­ing them out.” A man who is all cau­tion, will never dare to take hold and be suc­cess­ful; and a man who is all bold­ness, is merely reck­less, and must even­tu­ally fail. A man may go on “ ’change” and make fifty, or one hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars in spec­u­lat­ing in stocks, at a sin­gle op­er­a­tion. But if he has sim­ple bold­ness with­out cau­tion, it is mere chance, and what he gains to­day he will lose to­mor­row. You must have both the cau­tion and the bold­ness, to in­sure suc­cess.

The Roth­schilds have an­other maxim: “Never have any­thing to do with an un­lucky man or place.” That is to say, never have any­thing to do with a man or place which never suc­ceeds, be­cause, al­though a man may ap­pear to be hon­est and in­tel­li­gent, yet if he tries this or that thing and al­ways fails, it is on ac­count of some fault or in­fir­mity that you may not be able to dis­cover but nev­er­the­less which must ex­ist.

There is no such thing in the world as luck. There never was a man who could go out in the morn­ing and find a purse full of gold in the street to­day, and an­other to­mor­row, and so on, day af­ter day: He may do so once in his life; but so far as mere luck is con­cerned, he is as li­able to lose it as to find it. “Like causes pro­duce like ef­fects.” If a man adopts the proper meth­ods to be suc­cess­ful, “luck” will not pre­vent him. If he does not suc­ceed, there are rea­sons for it, al­though, per­haps, he may not be able to see them.

Use the Best Tools

Men in en­gag­ing em­ploy­ees should be care­ful to get the best. Un­der­stand, you can­not have too good tools to work with, and there is no tool you should be so par­tic­u­lar about as liv­ing tools. If you get a good one, it is bet­ter to keep him, than keep chang­ing. He learns some­thing ev­ery day; and you are ben­e­fited by the ex­pe­ri­ence he ac­quires. He is worth more to you this year than last, and he is the last man to part with, pro­vided his habits are good, and he con­tin­ues faith­ful. If, as he gets more valu­able, he de­mands an ex­or­bi­tant in­crease of salary; on the sup­po­si­tion that you can’t do with­out him, let him go. When­ever I have such an em­ployee, I al­ways dis­charge him; first, to con­vince him that his place may be sup­plied, and sec­ond, be­cause he is good for noth­ing if he thinks he is in­valu­able and can­not be spared.

But I would keep him, if pos­si­ble, in or­der to profit from the re­sult of his ex­pe­ri­ence. An im­por­tant el­e­ment in an em­ployee is the brain. You can see bills up, “Hands Wanted,” but “hands” are not worth a great deal with­out “heads.” Mr. Beecher il­lus­trates this, in this wise:

An em­ployee of­fers his ser­vices by say­ing, “I have a pair of hands and one of my fin­gers thinks.” “That is very good,” says the em­ployer. Another man comes along, and says “he has two fin­gers that think.” “Ah! that is bet­ter.” But a third calls in and says that “all his fin­gers and thumbs think.” That is bet­ter still. Fi­nally an­other steps in and says, “I have a brain that thinks; I think all over; I am a think­ing as well as a work­ing man!” “You are the man I want,” says the de­lighted em­ployer.

Those men who have brains and ex­pe­ri­ence are there­fore the most valu­able and not to be read­ily parted with; it is bet­ter for them, as well as your­self, to keep them, at rea­son­able ad­vances in their salaries from time to time.

Don’t Get Above Your Business

Young men af­ter they get through their busi­ness train­ing, or ap­pren­tice­ship, in­stead of pur­su­ing their av­o­ca­tion and ris­ing in their busi­ness, will of­ten lie about do­ing noth­ing. They say; “I have learned my busi­ness, but I am not go­ing to be a hireling; what is the ob­ject of learn­ing my trade or pro­fes­sion, un­less I es­tab­lish my­self?’ ”

“Have you cap­i­tal to start with?”

“No, but I am go­ing to have it.”

“How are you go­ing to get it?”

“I will tell you con­fi­den­tially; I have a wealthy old aunt, and she will die pretty soon; but if she does not, I ex­pect to find some rich old man who will lend me a few thou­sands to give me a start. If I only get the money to start with I will do well.”

There is no greater mis­take than when a young man be­lieves he will suc­ceed with bor­rowed money. Why? Be­cause ev­ery man’s ex­pe­ri­ence co­in­cides with that of Mr. As­tor, who said, “it was more dif­fi­cult for him to ac­cu­mu­late his first thou­sand dol­lars, than all the suc­ceed­ing mil­lions that made up his colos­sal for­tune.” Money is good for noth­ing un­less you know the value of it by ex­pe­ri­ence. Give a boy twenty thou­sand dol­lars and put him in busi­ness, and the chances are that he will lose ev­ery dol­lar of it be­fore he is a year older. Like buy­ing a ticket in the lot­tery, and draw­ing a prize, it is “easy come, easy go.” He does not know the value of it; noth­ing is worth any­thing, un­less it costs ef­fort. Without self-de­nial and econ­omy; pa­tience and per­se­ver­ance, and com­menc­ing with cap­i­tal which you have not earned, you are not sure to suc­ceed in ac­cu­mu­lat­ing. Young men, in­stead of “wait­ing for dead men’s shoes,” should be up and do­ing, for there is no class of per­sons who are so un­ac­com­mo­dat­ing in re­gard to dy­ing as these rich old peo­ple, and it is for­tu­nate for the ex­pec­tant heirs that it is so. Nine out of ten of the rich men of our coun­try to­day, started out in life as poor boys, with de­ter­mined wills, in­dus­try, per­se­ver­ance, econ­omy and good habits. They went on grad­u­ally, made their own money and saved it; and this is the best way to ac­quire a for­tune. Stephen Gi­rard started life as a poor cabin boy, and died worth nine mil­lion dol­lars. A. T. Ste­wart was a poor Ir­ish boy; and he paid taxes on a mil­lion and a half dol­lars of in­come, per year. John Ja­cob As­tor was a poor farmer boy, and died worth twenty mil­lions. Cor­nelius Van­der­bilt be­gan life row­ing a boat from Staten Is­land to New York; he pre­sented our gov­ern­ment with a steamship worth a mil­lion of dol­lars, and died worth fifty mil­lion. “There is no royal road to learn­ing,” says the proverb, and I may say it is equally true, “there is no royal road to wealth.” But I think there is a royal road to both. The road to learn­ing is a royal one; the road that en­ables the stu­dent to ex­pand his in­tel­lect and add ev­ery day to his stock of knowl­edge, un­til, in the pleas­ant process of in­tel­lec­tual growth, he is able to solve the most pro­found prob­lems, to count the stars, to an­a­lyze ev­ery atom of the globe, and to mea­sure the fir­ma­ment this is a re­gal high­way, and it is the only road worth trav­el­ing.

So in re­gard to wealth. Go on in con­fi­dence, study the rules, and above all things, study hu­man na­ture; for “the proper study of mankind is man,” and you will find that while ex­pand­ing the in­tel­lect and the mus­cles, your en­larged ex­pe­ri­ence will en­able you ev­ery day to ac­cu­mu­late more and more prin­ci­pal, which will in­crease it­self by in­ter­est and oth­er­wise, un­til you ar­rive at a state of in­de­pen­dence. You will find, as a gen­eral thing, that the poor boys get rich and the rich boys get poor. For in­stance, a rich man at his de­cease, leaves a large es­tate to his fam­ily. His el­dest sons, who have helped him earn his for­tune, know by ex­pe­ri­ence the value of money; and they take their in­her­i­tance and add to it. The sep­a­rate por­tions of the young chil­dren are placed at in­ter­est, and the lit­tle fel­lows are pat­ted on the head, and told a dozen times a day, “you are rich; you will never have to work, you can al­ways have what­ever you wish, for you were born with a golden spoon in your mouth.” The young heir soon finds out what that means; he has the finest dresses and play­things; he is crammed with sugar can­dies and al­most “killed with kind­ness,” and he passes from school to school, pet­ted and flat­tered. He be­comes ar­ro­gant and self-con­ceited, abuses his teach­ers, and car­ries ev­ery­thing with a high hand. He knows noth­ing of the real value of money, hav­ing never earned any; but he knows all about the “golden spoon” busi­ness. At col­lege, he in­vites his poor fel­low-stu­dents to his room, where he “wines and dines” them. He is ca­joled and ca­ressed, and called a glo­ri­ous good fol­low, be­cause he is so lav­ish of his money. He gives his game sup­pers, drives his fast horses, in­vites his chums to fêtes and par­ties, de­ter­mined to have lots of “good times.” He spends the night in frol­ics and de­bauch­ery, and leads off his com­pan­ions with the fa­mil­iar song, “we won’t go home till morn­ing.” He gets them to join him in pulling down signs, tak­ing gates from their hinges and throw­ing them into back yards and horse-ponds. If the po­lice ar­rest them, he knocks them down, is taken to the lockup, and joy­fully foots the bills.

“Ah! my boys,” he cries, “what is the use of be­ing rich, if you can’t en­joy your­self?”

He might more truly say, “if you can’t make a fool of your­self;” but he is “fast,” hates slow things, and doesn’t “see it.” Young men loaded down with other peo­ple’s money are al­most sure to lose all they in­herit, and they ac­quire all sorts of bad habits which, in the ma­jor­ity of cases, ruin them in health, purse and char­ac­ter. In this coun­try, one gen­er­a­tion fol­lows an­other, and the poor of to­day are rich in the next gen­er­a­tion, or the third. Their ex­pe­ri­ence leads them on, and they be­come rich, and they leave vast riches to their young chil­dren. Th­ese chil­dren, hav­ing been reared in lux­ury, are in­ex­pe­ri­enced and get poor; and af­ter long ex­pe­ri­ence an­other gen­er­a­tion comes on and gath­ers up riches again in turn. And thus “his­tory re­peats it­self,” and happy is he who by lis­ten­ing to the ex­pe­ri­ence of oth­ers avoids the rocks and shoals on which so many have been wrecked.

“In Eng­land, the busi­ness makes the man.” If a man in that coun­try is a me­chanic or work­ing­man, he is not rec­og­nized as a gen­tle­man. On the oc­ca­sion of my first ap­pear­ance be­fore Queen Vic­to­ria, the Duke of Welling­ton asked me what sphere in life Gen­eral Tom Thumb’s par­ents were in.

“His fa­ther is a car­pen­ter,” I replied.

“Oh! I had heard he was a gen­tle­man,” was the re­sponse of His Grace.

In this Repub­li­can coun­try, the man makes the busi­ness. No mat­ter whether he is a black­smith, a shoe­maker, a farmer, banker or lawyer, so long as his busi­ness is le­git­i­mate, he may be a gen­tle­man. So any “le­git­i­mate” busi­ness is a dou­ble bless­ing it helps the man en­gaged in it, and also helps oth­ers. The farmer sup­ports his own fam­ily, but he also ben­e­fits the mer­chant or me­chanic who needs the prod­ucts of his farm. The tai­lor not only makes a liv­ing by his trade, but he also ben­e­fits the farmer, the cler­gy­man and oth­ers who can­not make their own cloth­ing. But all these classes of­ten may be gen­tle­men.

The great am­bi­tion should be to ex­cel all oth­ers en­gaged in the same oc­cu­pa­tion.

The col­lege-stu­dent who was about grad­u­at­ing, said to an old lawyer:

“I have not yet de­cided which pro­fes­sion I will fol­low. Is your pro­fes­sion full?”

“The base­ment is much crowded, but there is plenty of room up­stairs,” was the witty and truth­ful re­ply.

No pro­fes­sion, trade, or call­ing, is over­crowded in the up­per story. Wher­ever you find the most hon­est and in­tel­li­gent mer­chant or banker, or the best lawyer, the best doc­tor, the best cler­gy­man, the best shoe­maker, car­pen­ter, or any­thing else, that man is most sought for, and has al­ways enough to do. As a na­tion, Amer­i­cans are too su­per­fi­cial—they are striv­ing to get rich quickly, and do not gen­er­ally do their busi­ness as sub­stan­tially and thor­oughly as they should, but who­ever ex­cels all oth­ers in his own line, if his habits are good and his in­tegrity un­doubted, can­not fail to se­cure abun­dant pa­tron­age, and the wealth that nat­u­rally fol­lows. Let your motto then al­ways be “Ex­cel­sior,” for by liv­ing up to it there is no such word as fail.

Learn Something Useful

Every man should make his son or daugh­ter learn some use­ful trade or pro­fes­sion, so that in these days of chang­ing for­tunes of be­ing rich to­day and poor to­mor­row they may have some­thing tan­gi­ble to fall back upon. This pro­vi­sion might save many per­sons from mis­ery, who by some un­ex­pected turn of for­tune have lost all their means.

Let Hope Predominate, but Be Not Too Visionary

Many per­sons are al­ways kept poor, be­cause they are too vi­sion­ary. Every project looks to them like cer­tain suc­cess, and there­fore they keep chang­ing from one busi­ness to an­other, al­ways in hot wa­ter, al­ways “un­der the har­row.” The plan of “count­ing the chick­ens be­fore they are hatched” is an er­ror of an­cient date, but it does not seem to im­prove by age.

Do Not Scatter Your Powers

En­gage in one kind of busi­ness only, and stick to it faith­fully un­til you suc­ceed, or un­til your ex­pe­ri­ence shows that you should aban­don it. A con­stant ham­mer­ing on one nail will gen­er­ally drive it home at last, so that it can be clinched. When a man’s un­di­vided at­ten­tion is cen­tered on one ob­ject, his mind will con­stantly be sug­gest­ing im­prove­ments of value, which would es­cape him if his brain was oc­cu­pied by a dozen dif­fer­ent sub­jects at once. Many a for­tune has slipped through a man’s fin­gers be­cause he was en­gaged in too many oc­cu­pa­tions at a time. There is good sense in the old cau­tion against hav­ing too many irons in the fire at once.

Be Systematic

Men should be sys­tem­atic in their busi­ness. A per­son who does busi­ness by rule, hav­ing a time and place for ev­ery­thing, do­ing his work promptly, will ac­com­plish twice as much and with half the trou­ble of him who does it care­lessly and slip­shod. By in­tro­duc­ing sys­tem into all your trans­ac­tions, do­ing one thing at a time, al­ways meet­ing ap­point­ments with punc­tu­al­ity, you find leisure for pas­time and recre­ation; whereas the man who only half does one thing, and then turns to some­thing else, and half does that, will have his busi­ness at loose ends, and will never know when his day’s work is done, for it never will be done. Of course, there is a limit to all these rules. We must try to pre­serve the happy medium, for there is such a thing as be­ing too sys­tem­atic. There are men and women, for in­stance, who put away things so care­fully that they can never find them again. It is too much like the “red tape” for­mal­ity at Wash­ing­ton, and Mr. Dick­ens’ “Cir­cum­lo­cu­tion Of­fice”—all the­ory and no re­sult.

When the As­tor House was first started in New York city, it was un­doubt­edly the best ho­tel in the coun­try. The pro­pri­etors had learned a good deal in Europe re­gard­ing ho­tels, and the land­lords were proud of the rigid sys­tem which per­vaded ev­ery de­part­ment of their great es­tab­lish­ment. When twelve o’clock at night had ar­rived, and there were a num­ber of guests around, one of the pro­pri­etors would say, “Touch that bell, John;” and in two min­utes sixty ser­vants, with a wa­ter-bucket in each hand, would present them­selves in the hall. “This,” said the land­lord, ad­dress­ing his guests, “is our fire-bell; it will show you we are quite safe here; we do ev­ery­thing sys­tem­at­i­cally.” This was be­fore the Cro­ton wa­ter was in­tro­duced into the city. But they some­times car­ried their sys­tem too far. On one oc­ca­sion, when the ho­tel was thronged with guests, one of the wait­ers was sud­denly in­dis­posed, and al­though there were fifty wait­ers in the ho­tel, the land­lord thought he must have his full com­ple­ment, or his “sys­tem” would be in­ter­fered with. Just be­fore din­ner­time, he rushed down stairs and said, “There must be an­other waiter, I am one waiter short, what can I do?” He hap­pened to see “Boots,” the Ir­ish­man. “Pat,” said he, “wash your hands and face; take that white apron and come into the din­ing-room in five min­utes.” Presently Pat ap­peared as re­quired, and the pro­pri­etor said: “Now Pat, you must stand be­hind these two chairs, and wait on the gen­tle­men who will oc­cupy them; did you ever act as a waiter?”

“I know all about it, sure, but I never did it.”

Like the Ir­ish pi­lot, on one oc­ca­sion when the cap­tain, think­ing he was con­sid­er­ably out of his course, asked, “Are you cer­tain you un­der­stand what you are do­ing?”

Pat replied, “Sure and I knows ev­ery rock in the chan­nel.”

That mo­ment, “bang” thumped the ves­sel against a rock.

“Ah! be-jabers, and that is one of ’em,” con­tin­ued the pi­lot. But to re­turn to the din­ing-room. “Pat,” said the land­lord, “here we do ev­ery­thing sys­tem­at­i­cally. You must first give the gen­tle­men each a plate of soup, and when they fin­ish that, ask them what they will have next.”

Pat replied, “Ah! an’ I un­der­stand par­fectly the vartues of shys­tem.”

Very soon in came the guests. The plates of soup were placed be­fore them. One of Pat’s two gen­tle­men ate his soup; the other did not care for it. He said: “Waiter, take this plate away and bring me some fish.” Pat looked at the un­tasted plate of soup, and re­mem­ber­ing the in­struc­tions of the land­lord in re­gard to “sys­tem,” replied: “Not till ye have ate yer supe!”

Of course that was car­ry­ing “sys­tem” en­tirely too far.

Read the Newspapers

Al­ways take a trust­wor­thy news­pa­per, and thus keep thor­oughly posted in re­gard to the trans­ac­tions of the world. He who is with­out a news­pa­per is cut off from his species. In these days of tele­graphs and steam, many im­por­tant in­ven­tions and im­prove­ments in ev­ery branch of trade are be­ing made, and he who don’t con­sult the news­pa­pers will soon find him­self and his busi­ness left out in the cold.

Beware of “Outside Operations”

We some­times see men who have ob­tained for­tunes, sud­denly be­come poor. In many cases, this arises from in­tem­per­ance, and of­ten from gam­ing, and other bad habits. Fre­quently it oc­curs be­cause a man has been en­gaged in “out­side op­er­a­tions,” of some sort. When he gets rich in his le­git­i­mate busi­ness, he is told of a grand spec­u­la­tion where he can make a score of thou­sands. He is con­stantly flat­tered by his friends, who tell him that he is born lucky, that ev­ery­thing he touches turns into gold. Now if he for­gets that his eco­nom­i­cal habits, his rec­ti­tude of con­duct and a per­sonal at­ten­tion to a busi­ness which he un­der­stood, caused his suc­cess in life, he will lis­ten to the siren voices. He says:

“I will put in twenty thou­sand dol­lars. I have been lucky, and my good luck will soon bring me back sixty thou­sand dol­lars.”

A few days elapse and it is dis­cov­ered he must put in ten thou­sand dol­lars more: soon af­ter he is told “it is all right,” but cer­tain mat­ters not fore­seen, re­quire an ad­vance of twenty thou­sand dol­lars more, which will bring him a rich har­vest; but be­fore the time comes around to re­al­ize, the bub­ble bursts, he loses all he is pos­sessed of, and then he learns what he ought to have known at the first, that how­ever suc­cess­ful a man may be in his own busi­ness, if he turns from that and en­gages ill a busi­ness which he don’t un­der­stand, he is like Sam­son when shorn of his locks his strength has de­parted, and he be­comes like other men.

If a man has plenty of money, he ought to in­vest some­thing in ev­ery­thing that ap­pears to prom­ise suc­cess, and that will prob­a­bly ben­e­fit mankind; but let the sums thus in­vested be mod­er­ate in amount, and never let a man fool­ishly jeop­ar­dize a for­tune that he has earned in a le­git­i­mate way, by in­vest­ing it in things in which he has had no ex­pe­ri­ence.

Don’t Endorse Without Security

I hold that no man ought ever to en­dorse a note or be­come se­cu­rity, for any man, be it his fa­ther or brother, to a greater ex­tent than he can af­ford to lose and care noth­ing about, with­out tak­ing good se­cu­rity. Here is a man that is worth twenty thou­sand dol­lars; he is do­ing a thriv­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing or mer­can­tile trade; you are re­tired and liv­ing on your money; he comes to you and says:

“You are aware that I am worth twenty thou­sand dol­lars, and don’t owe a dol­lar; if I had five thou­sand dol­lars in cash, I could pur­chase a par­tic­u­lar lot of goods and dou­ble my money in a cou­ple of months; will you en­dorse my note for that amount?”

You re­flect that he is worth twenty thou­sand dol­lars, and you in­cur no risk by en­dors­ing his note; you like to ac­com­mo­date him, and you lend your name with­out tak­ing the pre­cau­tion of get­ting se­cu­rity. Shortly af­ter, he shows you the note with your en­dorse­ment can­celed, and tells you, prob­a­bly truly, “that he made the profit that he ex­pected by the op­er­a­tion,” you re­flect that you have done a good ac­tion, and the thought makes you feel happy. By and by, the same thing oc­curs again and you do it again; you have al­ready fixed the im­pres­sion in your mind that it is per­fectly safe to en­dorse his notes with­out se­cu­rity.

But the trou­ble is, this man is get­ting money too eas­ily. He has only to take your note to the bank, get it dis­counted and take the cash. He gets money for the time be­ing with­out ef­fort; with­out in­con­ve­nience to him­self. Now mark the re­sult. He sees a chance for spec­u­la­tion out­side of his busi­ness. A tem­po­rary in­vest­ment of only $10,000 is re­quired. It is sure to come back be­fore a note at the bank would be due. He places a note for that amount be­fore you. You sign it al­most me­chan­i­cally. Be­ing firmly con­vinced that your friend is re­spon­si­ble and trust­wor­thy; you en­dorse his notes as a “mat­ter of course.”

Un­for­tu­nately the spec­u­la­tion does not come to a head quite so soon as was ex­pected, and an­other $10,000 note must be dis­counted to take up the last one when due. Be­fore this note ma­tures the spec­u­la­tion has proved an ut­ter fail­ure and all the money is lost. Does the loser tell his friend, the en­dorser, that he has lost half of his for­tune? Not at all. He don’t even men­tion that he has spec­u­lated at all. But he has got ex­cited; the spirit of spec­u­la­tion has seized him; he sees oth­ers mak­ing large sums in this way (we sel­dom hear of the losers), and, like other spec­u­la­tors, he “looks for his money where he loses it.” He tries again. En­dors­ing notes has be­come chronic with you, and at ev­ery loss he gets your sig­na­ture for what­ever amount he wants. Fi­nally you dis­cover your friend has lost all of his prop­erty and all of yours. You are over­whelmed with as­ton­ish­ment and grief, and you say, “it is a hard thing; my friend here has ru­ined me,” but, you should add, “I have also ru­ined him.” If you had said in the first place, “I will ac­com­mo­date you, but I never en­dorse with­out tak­ing am­ple se­cu­rity,” he could not have gone be­yond the length of his tether, and he would never have been tempted away from his le­git­i­mate busi­ness. It is a very dan­ger­ous thing, there­fore, at any time, to let peo­ple get pos­ses­sion of money too eas­ily; it tempts them to haz­ardous spec­u­la­tions, if noth­ing more. Solomon truly said, “he that hateth sureti­ship is sure.”

So with the young man start­ing in busi­ness; let him un­der­stand the value of money by earn­ing it. When he does un­der­stand its value, then grease the wheels a lit­tle in help­ing him to start busi­ness, but re­mem­ber, men who get money with too great fa­cil­ity can­not usu­ally suc­ceed. You must get the first dol­lars by hard knocks, and at some sac­ri­fice, in or­der to ap­pre­ci­ate the value of those dol­lars.

Advertise Your Business

We all de­pend, more or less, upon the pub­lic for our sup­port. We all trade with the pub­lic—lawyers, doc­tors, shoe­mak­ers, artists, black­smiths, show­men, opera stagers, rail­road pres­i­dents, and col­lege pro­fes­sors. Those who deal with the pub­lic must be care­ful that their goods are valu­able; that they are gen­uine, and will give sat­is­fac­tion. When you get an ar­ti­cle which you know is go­ing to please your cus­tomers, and that when they have tried it, they will feel they have got their money’s worth, then let the fact be known that you have got it. Be care­ful to ad­ver­tise it in some shape or other be­cause it is ev­i­dent that if a man has ever so good an ar­ti­cle for sale, and no­body knows it, it will bring him no re­turn. In a coun­try like this, where nearly ev­ery­body reads, and where news­pa­pers are is­sued and cir­cu­lated in edi­tions of five thou­sand to two hun­dred thou­sand, it would be very un­wise if this chan­nel was not taken ad­van­tage of to reach the pub­lic in ad­ver­tis­ing. A news­pa­per goes into the fam­ily, and is read by wife and chil­dren, as well as the head of the home; hence hun­dreds and thou­sands of peo­ple may read your ad­ver­tise­ment, while you are at­tend­ing to your rou­tine busi­ness. Many, per­haps, read it while you are asleep. The whole phi­los­o­phy of life is, first “sow,” then “reap.” That is the way the farmer does; he plants his pota­toes and corn, and sows his grain, and then goes about some­thing else, and the time comes when he reaps. But he never reaps first and sows af­ter­wards. This prin­ci­ple ap­plies to all kinds of busi­ness, and to noth­ing more em­i­nently than to ad­ver­tis­ing. If a man has a gen­uine ar­ti­cle, there is no way in which he can reap more ad­van­ta­geously than by “sow­ing” to the pub­lic in this way. He must, of course, have a re­ally good ar­ti­cle, and one which will please his cus­tomers; any­thing spu­ri­ous will not suc­ceed per­ma­nently be­cause the pub­lic is wiser than many imag­ine. Men and women are self­ish, and we all pre­fer pur­chas­ing where we can get the most for our money and we try to find out where we can most surely do so.

You may ad­ver­tise a spu­ri­ous ar­ti­cle, and in­duce many peo­ple to call and buy it once, but they will de­nounce you as an im­pos­tor and swindler, and your busi­ness will grad­u­ally die out and leave you poor. This is right. Few peo­ple can safely de­pend upon chance cus­tom. You all need to have your cus­tomers re­turn and pur­chase again. A man said to me, “I have tried ad­ver­tis­ing and did not suc­ceed; yet I have a good ar­ti­cle.”

I replied, “My friend, there may be ex­cep­tions to a gen­eral rule. But how do you ad­ver­tise?”

“I put it in a weekly news­pa­per three times, and paid a dol­lar and a half for it.”

I replied: “Sir, ad­ver­tis­ing is like learn­ing—‘a lit­tle is a dan­ger­ous thing!’ ”

A French writer says that “The reader of a news­pa­per does not see the first men­tion of an or­di­nary ad­ver­tise­ment; the sec­ond in­ser­tion he sees, but does not read; the third in­ser­tion he reads; the fourth in­ser­tion, he looks at the price; the fifth in­ser­tion, he speaks of it to his wife; the sixth in­ser­tion, he is ready to pur­chase, and the sev­enth in­ser­tion, he pur­chases.” Your ob­ject in ad­ver­tis­ing is to make the pub­lic un­der­stand what you have got to sell, and if you have not the pluck to keep ad­ver­tis­ing, un­til you have im­parted that in­for­ma­tion, all the money you have spent is lost. You are like the fel­low who told the gen­tle­man if he would give him ten cents it would save him a dol­lar. “How can I help you so much with so small a sum?” asked the gen­tle­man in sur­prise. “I started out this morn­ing (hic­cuped the fel­low) with the full de­ter­mi­na­tion to get drunk, and I have spent my only dol­lar to ac­com­plish the ob­ject, and it has not quite done it. Ten cents worth more of whiskey would just do it, and in this man­ner I should save the dol­lar al­ready ex­pended.”

So a man who ad­ver­tises at all must keep it up un­til the pub­lic know who and what he is, and what his busi­ness is, or else the money in­vested in ad­ver­tis­ing is lost.

Some men have a pe­cu­liar ge­nius for writ­ing a strik­ing ad­ver­tise­ment, one that will ar­rest the at­ten­tion of the reader at first sight. This fact, of course, gives the ad­ver­tiser a great ad­van­tage. Some­times a man makes him­self pop­u­lar by an unique sign or a cu­ri­ous dis­play in his win­dow, re­cently I ob­served a swing sign ex­tend­ing over the side­walk in front of a store, on which was the in­scrip­tion in plain let­ters,

“Don’t Read the Other Side”

Of course I did, and so did ev­ery­body else, and I learned that the man had made all in­de­pen­dence by first at­tract­ing the pub­lic to his busi­ness in that way and then us­ing his cus­tomers well af­ter­wards.

Genin, the hat­ter, bought the first Jenny Lind ticket at auc­tion for two hun­dred and twenty-five dol­lars, be­cause he knew it would be a good ad­ver­tise­ment for him. “Who is the bid­der?” said the auc­tion­eer, as he knocked down that ticket at Cas­tle Gar­den. “Genin, the hat­ter,” was the re­sponse. Here were thou­sands of peo­ple from the Fifth av­enue, and from dis­tant cities in the high­est sta­tions in life. “Who is ‘Genin,’ the hat­ter?” they ex­claimed. They had never heard of him be­fore. The next morn­ing the news­pa­pers and tele­graph had cir­cu­lated the facts from Maine to Texas, and from five to ten mil­lions off peo­ple had read that the tick­ets sold at auc­tion For Jenny Lind’s first con­cert amounted to about twenty thou­sand dol­lars, and that a sin­gle ticket was sold at two hun­dred and twenty-five dol­lars, to “Genin, the hat­ter.” Men through­out the coun­try in­vol­un­tar­ily took off their hats to see if they had a “Genin” hat on their heads. At a town in Iowa it was found that in the crowd around the post of­fice, there was one man who had a “Genin” hat, and he showed it in tri­umph, al­though it was worn out and not worth two cents. “Why,” one man ex­claimed, “you have a real ‘Genin’ hat; what a lucky fel­low you are.” Another man said, “Hang on to that hat, it will be a valu­able heir­loom in your fam­ily.” Still an­other man in the crowd who seemed to envy the pos­ses­sor of this good for­tune, said, “Come, give us all a chance; put it up at auc­tion!” He did so, and it was sold as a keep­sake for nine dol­lars and fifty cents! What was the con­se­quence to Mr. Genin? He sold ten thou­sand ex­tra hats per an­num, the first six years. Nine-tenths of the pur­chasers bought of him, prob­a­bly, out of cu­rios­ity, and many of them, find­ing that he gave them an equiv­a­lent for their money, be­came his reg­u­lar cus­tomers. This novel ad­ver­tise­ment first struck their at­ten­tion, and then, as he made a good ar­ti­cle, they came again.

Now I don’t say that ev­ery­body should ad­ver­tise as Mr. Genin did. But I say if a man has got goods for sale, and he don’t ad­ver­tise them in some way, the chances are that some day the sher­iff will do it for him. Nor do I say that ev­ery­body must ad­ver­tise in a news­pa­per, or in­deed use “print­ers’ ink” at all. On the con­trary, al­though that ar­ti­cle is in­dis­pens­able in the ma­jor­ity of cases, yet doc­tors and cler­gy­men, and some­times lawyers and some oth­ers, can more ef­fec­tu­ally reach the pub­lic in some other man­ner. But it is ob­vi­ous, they must be known in some way, else how could they be sup­ported?

Be Polite and Kind to Your Customers

Po­lite­ness and ci­vil­ity are the best cap­i­tal ever in­vested in busi­ness. Large stores, gilt signs, flam­ing ad­ver­tise­ments, will all prove un­avail­ing if you or your em­ploy­ees treat your pa­trons abruptly. The truth is, the more kind and lib­eral a man is, the more gen­er­ous will be the pa­tron­age be­stowed upon him. “Like begets like.” The man who gives the great­est amount of goods of a cor­re­spond­ing qual­ity for the least sum (still re­serv­ing for him­self a profit) will gen­er­ally suc­ceed best in the long run. This brings us to the golden rule, “As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them;” and they will do bet­ter by you than if you al­ways treated them as if you wanted to get the most you could out of them for the least re­turn. Men who drive sharp bar­gains with their cus­tomers, act­ing as if they never ex­pected to see them again, will not be mis­taken. They will never see them again as cus­tomers. Peo­ple don’t like to pay and get kicked also.

One of the ush­ers in my Mu­seum once told me he in­tended to whip a man who was in the lec­ture-room as soon as he came out.

“What for?” I in­quired.

“Be­cause he said I was no gen­tle­man,” replied the usher.

“Never mind,” I replied, “he pays for that, and you will not con­vince him you are a gen­tle­man by whip­ping him. I can­not af­ford to lose a cus­tomer. If you whip him, he will never visit the Mu­seum again, and he will in­duce friends to go with him to other places of amuse­ment in­stead of this, and thus you see, I should be a se­ri­ous loser.”

“But he in­sulted me,” mut­tered the usher.

“Ex­actly,” I replied, “and if he owned the Mu­seum, and you had paid him for the priv­i­lege of vis­it­ing it, and he had then in­sulted you, there might be some rea­son in your re­sent­ing it, but in this in­stance he is the man who pays, while we re­ceive, and you must, there­fore, put up with his bad man­ners.”

My usher laugh­ingly re­marked, that this was un­doubt­edly the true pol­icy; but he added that he should not ob­ject to an in­crease of salary if he was ex­pected to be abused in or­der to pro­mote my in­ter­est.

Be Charitable

Of course men should be char­i­ta­ble, be­cause it is a duty and a plea­sure. But even as a mat­ter of pol­icy, if you pos­sess no higher in­cen­tive, you will find that the lib­eral man will com­mand pa­tron­age, while the sor­did, un­char­i­ta­ble miser will be avoided.

Solomon says: “There is that scat­tereth and yet in­creaseth; and there is that with­hold­eth more than meet, but it ten­deth to poverty.” Of course the only true char­ity is that which is from the heart.

The best kind of char­ity is to help those who are will­ing to help them­selves. Promis­cu­ous alms­giv­ing, with­out in­quir­ing into the wor­thi­ness of the ap­pli­cant, is bad in ev­ery sense. But to search out and qui­etly as­sist those who are strug­gling for them­selves, is the kind that “scat­tereth and yet in­creaseth.” But don’t fall into the idea that some per­sons prac­tice, of giv­ing a prayer in­stead of a potato, and a bene­dic­tion in­stead of bread, to the hun­gry. It is eas­ier to make Chris­tians with full stom­achs than empty.

Don’t Blab

Some men have a fool­ish habit of telling their busi­ness se­crets. If they make money they like to tell their neigh­bors how it was done. Noth­ing is gained by this, and oft­times much is lost. Say noth­ing about your prof­its, your hopes, your ex­pec­ta­tions, your in­ten­tions. And this should ap­ply to let­ters as well as to con­ver­sa­tion. Goethe makes Mephistophiles say: “Never write a let­ter nor de­stroy one.” Busi­ness men must write let­ters, but they should be care­ful what they put in them. If you are los­ing money, be spe­cially cau­tious and not tell of it, or you will lose your rep­u­ta­tion.

Preserve Your Integrity

It is more pre­cious than di­a­monds or ru­bies. The old miser said to his sons: “Get money; get it hon­estly if you can, but get money:” This ad­vice was not only atro­ciously wicked, but it was the very essence of stu­pid­ity: It was as much as to say, “if you find it dif­fi­cult to ob­tain money hon­estly, you can eas­ily get it dis­hon­estly. Get it in that way.” Poor fool! Not to know that the most dif­fi­cult thing in life is to make money dis­hon­estly! Not to know that our pris­ons are full of men who at­tempted to fol­low this ad­vice; not to un­der­stand that no man can be dis­hon­est, with­out soon be­ing found out, and that when his lack of prin­ci­ple is dis­cov­ered, nearly ev­ery av­enue to suc­cess is closed against him for­ever. The pub­lic very prop­erly shun all whose in­tegrity is doubted. No mat­ter how po­lite and pleas­ant and ac­com­mo­dat­ing a man may be, none of us dare to deal with him if we sus­pect “false weights and mea­sures.” Strict hon­esty, not only lies at the foun­da­tion of all suc­cess in life (fi­nan­cially), but in ev­ery other re­spect. Un­com­pro­mis­ing in­tegrity of char­ac­ter is in­valu­able. It se­cures to its pos­ses­sor a peace and joy which can­not be at­tained with­out it—which no amount of money, or houses and lands can pur­chase. A man who is known to be strictly hon­est, may be ever so poor, but he has the purses of all the com­mu­nity at his dis­posal—for all know that if he prom­ises to re­turn what he bor­rows, he will never dis­ap­point them. As a mere mat­ter of self­ish­ness, there­fore, if a man had no higher mo­tive for be­ing hon­est, all will find that the maxim of Dr. Franklin can never fail to be true, that “hon­esty is the best pol­icy.”

To get rich, is not al­ways equiv­a­lent to be­ing suc­cess­ful. “There are many rich poor men,” while there are many oth­ers, hon­est and de­vout men and women, who have never pos­sessed so much money as some rich per­sons squan­der in a week, but who are nev­er­the­less re­ally richer and hap­pier than any man can ever be while he is a trans­gres­sor of the higher laws of his be­ing.

The in­or­di­nate love of money, no doubt, may be and is “the root of all evil,” but money it­self, when prop­erly used, is not only a “handy thing to have in the house,” but af­fords the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of bless­ing our race by en­abling its pos­ses­sor to en­large the scope of hu­man hap­pi­ness and hu­man in­flu­ence. The de­sire for wealth is nearly uni­ver­sal, and none can say it is not laud­able, pro­vided the pos­ses­sor of it ac­cepts its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, and uses it as a friend to hu­man­ity.

The his­tory of money-get­ting, which is com­merce, is a his­tory of civ­i­liza­tion, and wher­ever trade has flour­ished most, there, too, have art and sci­ence pro­duced the no­blest fruits. In fact, as a gen­eral thing, money-get­ters are the bene­fac­tors of our race. To them, in a great mea­sure, are we in­debted for our in­sti­tu­tions of learn­ing and of art, our acad­e­mies, col­leges and churches. It is no ar­gu­ment against the de­sire for, or the pos­ses­sion of wealth, to say that there are some­times mi­sers who hoard money only for the sake of hoard­ing and who have no higher as­pi­ra­tion than to grasp ev­ery­thing which comes within their reach. As we have some­times hyp­ocrites in re­li­gion, and dem­a­gogues in pol­i­tics, so there are oc­ca­sion­ally mi­sers among money-get­ters. Th­ese, how­ever, are only ex­cep­tions to the gen­eral rule. But when, in this coun­try, we find such a nui­sance and stum­bling block as a miser, we re­mem­ber with grat­i­tude that in Amer­ica we have no laws of pri­mo­gen­i­ture, and that in the due course of na­ture the time will come when the hoarded dust will be scat­tered for the ben­e­fit of mankind. To all men and women, there­fore, do I con­sci­en­tiously say, make money hon­estly, and not oth­er­wise, for Shake­speare has truly said, “He that wants money, means, and con­tent, is with­out three good friends.”