OUR BUSINESS BOYS,

upon leaving my office, I have dropped it from my
mind, and have discouraged men with whom I had
business relations from obtruding it upon me out of
business hours. I am sure that I am much better off,
in every way, for having pursued this course.”

But I must take it for granted that you have some
true idea of what true success means, and go on to
tell you that the business men of Portland say, in the
first place: “Try to find out that for which you are
best adapted, and stick to that one thing.” Almost
all of them say this in some form or other.

“ Carefully determine what business you are fitted
for, and then never be satisfied except by advancing,”
says one.

“ A young man should have a real love, amounting
to a passion, for his calling,” says another.

“ Business life means more to-day than it ever did
before,” says another, “and business integrity is
achieved under greater temptation, and is therefore
significant of greater virtue.”

Then he goes on to speak of the different ways of
buying and selling goods which were in vogue fifty
years ago; of the constantly fluctuating markets; of
the keen-edged competition that cuts down profits;
and then adds: “Business men to succeed, must
keep up with the times.”

One of the ways to keep up with the times and to
make yourselves felt, is to take up one branch, and to
make yourself a specialist in this sense; that you can
do one thing at least, better than most other people
can doit. The field is too large in these days, and
competition is too sharp, for a man to do many things

well. The good poet is not usually a good painter
too. The fine musician is not generally a great arch-
itect. The successful merchant cannot carry on the

‘jaw business and do a little doctoring at the same
time.

In the old days, the minister in the country used to
carry on a farm, and entertain most of the strangers
who came to his village, and make his own boots
sometimes, and be his own butcher and baker and
candle (if not candlestick) maker; but now the pas-
tor of the smallest village church usually finds enough
to do without either farming it or keeping a free
hotel. So you will find it, boys, whatever business
you go into, and if you attempt to spread yourselves
ott over too much surface, you will become like the
sugar coating on a pill, very thin, and very inadequate
to hide the bitter dose which life has in store for you.
“This one thing I do,” is a good motto for any boy,

259

and all the better because it is found in the Bible.

When you have discovered what you are best fitted
for, and have decided to do that one thing, then all
these business men of Portland say: “ Work hard at
#,” Every one of them is decided upon this point,
that hard work is the price of true success.

“There is a very wide disposition throughout the
country to obtain a livelihood or to get rich without
work, The young should be taught that man to ful-
fil his calling, must produce something,” says one,

“Too many young men seek soft places, and go
behind a counter when they ought to go into the
field or machine shop,” says another.

“Let a young man go to work at something, with
little regard to immediate compensation,” says a third.

“Young men often say the world owes them a
living, and they are bound to have it. Now the world
owes them nothing but what they earn, and does not
owe them fine clothes or fast horses or the thousand
and one luxuries which they desire,” says a fourth.

“The wish for a ‘genteel occupation ’ is ruinous,”
says a fifth. ,

“We want fewer lightning calculators, and more
thorough-going, earnest, hard-working men,” says a
sixth.

Another quotes approvingly Judson’s motto. When
asked how he had accomplished such vast results, the
heroic missionary replied :

“T have no plan, except that when I have anything
to do, Z go and do it.”

If I could bend down the ear of each of the boys
who has just gone into a store, or is just going into
one, I should whisper to him: “If you want to suc-
ceed in business, make yourself indispensable to
your employer,” for this is one very important secret
that I have learned from these letters. Over and
over and over again this same form of words occurs:

“Let him make himself indispensable to his em-
ployer; ” and yet no one of my correspondents knew
what another was going to write me. “By hard work,
by thorough knowledge of detail, by fidelity in little
things, make such a place for yourself that your
employer cannot get along without you.”

I think if I had asked any successful man in any
city, instead of the merchants of Portland alone, they
would each one have mentioned hard work and con-
tinuous work among the elements of their success,
for a great many others have said the same thing in
the past, and the advice is all the more weighty
because it is so old and has been so often repeated,