looking for work, or, if they have it, in a position where the pay is nothing. We have too many such who expect to climb up the ladder of fame and fortune without working for it. They are looking around for pins to pick up, and be folded to the embrace of some wealthy bank president or philanthrophic merchant, made a partner, and finally marry into the family. Such cases are not to be found every day in the present time. We read Munchausen tales of years gone by, that have an ending like this. But to-day the merchant who wants a young man, wants one of character and ability. Learn a trade, young man; first become proficient in some branch of industry, so that when you go forth to pastures new, you know within yourself that you have something to fall back on for a living." THE SECRETS OF SUCCESS. Business life is the glory of millions of people. By merchandising, most of the mammoth fortunes of the country have been made. Pure speculation has its representative millionaires, but industry in trade laid the foundation of wealth in nearly all remarkable cases. Daniel Drew lost by speculation the great riches he had accumulated by trade. A. T. Stewart was a merchant, pure and simple. The wealthiest men, or at least the majority of wealthy men, in all our great cities, accumulated their property in business channels. The recognition of this fact is probably what makes business life so attractive to young Americans, who imagine if they get money they need look after nothing else. "Yet let us own that Trade has much of chance, Not all the careful by their care advance; With the same parts and prospects, one a seat No more have gained than-not to be in debt." And many are not so fortunate as to close the year even. Business houses go down at the rate of more than a hundred a week. More goods are placed on the market than people can buy. While merchants wait for needed custom, their rents, wages of employés, and living expenses, eat up their capital. What are some of the secrets of success? Cannot young business men learn wisdom of the wise, and escape failure? Perhaps so, if they will. Sir Walter Scott's advice to a youth who had just begun work in a new situation is most excellent: "You must beware of stumbling over a propensity, which easily besets you from not having your time fully occupied. I mean what women very expressively call dawdling. Your motto must be, Hoc age (this do). Do instantly, whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after business, and never before it. When a regiment is under march, the rear is often thrown into confusion, because the front do not move steadily, and without interruption. It is the same thing with business. If that which is first in hand is not instantly, steadily, and regularly despatched, other things accumulate behind, till affairs begin to press all at once, and no human brain can stand the confusion. Pray, remember this: this is a habit of mind, which is very apt to beset men of intellect and talent, especially when their time is not regularly filled up, and is left at their own arrangement; but it is like the ivy round the oak, and ends by limiting, if it does not destroy, the power of manly and necessary exertion." Don't be easily discouraged when you have finally resolved upon an undertaking for yourself. Very likely you will have to endure physical hardships, severe trial, and perhaps cruel rebuffs. Others are in the field before you. Experienced men hold the best positions. Your aspirations and successes may awaken jealousy. Possibly you may never develop very superior talent, and will have to wait through the long years until the death of another opens a place for you, or until the growth and development of your town or city warrants the establishment of an independent business or practice. What if you are buffeted? It will only give you greater tenacity of purpose and power of endurance. Great leaders often experience utter want of recognition and sympathy in their early endeavors. In their seclusion, however, they take on strength and hardness, until at the ortune moment they burst upon the world's stage, like comets upon the sky, to run their signal career. If you are the child of indulgent parents, and have been coddled from infancy up, your experience will doubtless prove the more severe and bitter. The Watchman expresses the belief that in "nine cases out of ten a man's life will not be a success if he does not bear burdens in his childhood. If the fondness or the vanity of father or mother has kept him from hard work; if another always helped him out at the end of his row; if instead of taking his turn at pitching off he stowed away all the time—in short, if what was light fell to him, and what was heavy about the work to some one else; if he has been permitted to shrink, until shrinking has become a habit, unless a miracle has been wrought, his life will be a failure, and the blame will not be half as much his as that of his weak and foolish parents. "On the other hand, if a boy has been brought up to do his part, never allowed to shrink his responsibility, or to dodge work, whether or not it made his head ache, or soiled his hands, until bearing burdens became a matter of pride, the heavy end of the wood his choice, parents, as they bid him good-bye, may dismiss their fear. The elements of success are his, and at some time and in some way the world will recognize his capacity." All very true, but boys who have been indulged need not despair. There is time for the needed discipline, and for the development of capacity and force, even after you arrive at your majority and leave the paternal roof. Go to work. Master your calling. Strike out into new channels and execute your designs with energy and heroism. The story of John B. Gough's boyhood, as told in Wide Awake, ought to be stimulating to young men who are discontented with their lot, and easily discouraged. Born in a very humble home at Sangate, on the English coast, gleaning with his mother and sister after the reapers, that they might have bread to eat, or cleaning knives and shoes in the gentleman's house where his father was a servant, there was little to make a boy's life bright. When he was twelve, a family offered to bring him to America, if his parents would pay fifty dollars for his passage. It was difficult to earn this, but his mother thought, after the manner of mothers, "Perhaps in the New World our John will be some body." So, with tears, she packed his scanty clothing, putting in a little Bible, and pinning these lines on a shirt: "Forget me not when death shall close Oh, then, whate'er thy age or lot May be, my child, forget me not.-JANE GOUGH." Then, again and again she pressed her only boy to her heart, and stole behind the garden wall, that, unobserved, she might catch a last look of the stage which carried him to London. The voyage was a long one of nearly two months. The little lad often cried in his cabin, and he wrote back, "I wish mother could wash me to-night," showing what a tender "mother's boy" he was. When New York harbor was entered, and he was eager to see his adopted country, he was sent below to black boots and shoes for the family. His school days were now over. After two years of hard work in the country, he sold his knife to buy a postage stamp, and wrote his father, asking his permission to go to New York and learn a trade. Consent was given, and, in the middle of the winter, our English lad of fourteen reached the great city, with no home, no friends, and only fifty cents in his pocket. Hundreds passed by as he stood on the dock, holding his little trunk in his hands, but nobody spoke to him. But at last, by dint of earnerrand-boy and learn book estness, he found a place to enter as binding, receiving two dollars and twenty-five cents a week and paying two dollars out of this for board. How his employers supposed he could live on one dollar a month for clothes and washing has never appeared. The first night he was placed by his boarding-mistress in an attic, with an Irishman who was deadly ill. The second night the man died, and the horror-stricken young boy staid alone with the dead till morning. Now nearly two painful years more went by. Finally, though he earned but three dollars a week, he sent to England for his mother and sister. When they arrived two rooms were rented; the girl found work in a straw-bonnet factory, and, poor though they were, they were very happy. John was now sixteen, devoted to his mother, and still a noble, unselfish, persevering boy. At the end of three months, through dullness of business, both children lost their places, and now began the struggles which the poor know so well in our large cities. In vain they looked for work. Then they left their two decent rooms, and moved into a garret. Winter came on, and they had neither fuel nor food. John walked miles out into the country, and dragged home old sticks of wood which lay by the road-side. He pawned his coat that the mother, who had now become ill, might have some mutton broth. One day he left her in tears, and went sobbing down the street. "What is the matter?" said a stranger. "I'm hungry, and so is my mother." "Well, I can't do much, but I'll help you a little," and he gave John a three-cent loaf of bread. When the boy reached home, the good woman put the Bible on the rickety pine table, read from it, and then all knelt and thanked God for the precious loaf. In the spring, he obtained employment at four dollars and a half a week, but poverty and privation had fallen too heavily, rested too long, upon the mother. One day, while preparing John's simple supper of rice and milk, she fell dead. All night long the desolate boy held her cold hand in his, then, in that Christian city, she was put in a pine box, and, without shroud or prayers, carried in a cart, her two children walking behind it, and was buried in the Potter's Field. For three days afterward John and his sister never tasted food. Probably the world said "Poor things!" but it is certain that nobody offered to help them. If a young man would be successful in any vocation, let him heed the golden words of the New York Tribune: "First: Be honest. By which we do not mean simply not to steal. That goes without saying. The young man who, before his beard is grown, thinks it clever to cheat his tailor, or to sneak out |