260

I have no doubt many boys have envied Thomas
Edison, whom, with his boyish, yet thoughtful face,
they have seen looking out at them from the maga-
zines and illustrated papers, and have wished that
they too might be great inventors. There isn’t
much use in your envying Mr. Edison, but there is a
deal of use in your following his advice. He says:

“Tf a man would succeed, there must be continu-
ity of work.

“When you set out to do anything, never let any-
thing disturb you from doing that one thing. This
power of putting the thought on one particular thing
and keeping it there for hours at a time, takes prac-
tice, and it takes a long time to get into the habit.

“T remember a long time ago I could only think
ten minutes on a given subject before something else
would come into my mind. But, after long practice,
I can now keep my mind for hours upon one topic
without being distracted with thoughts of other mat-
ters.”

“The great thing to do for the business boy, is to
throw himself into something,” says a wise New York
merchant. ‘I should not be particular what, so that
tt gave him a chance to begin, and I should make him
understand that he must make his way from that point.

“ Go-at-it-ive-ness is the first condition of success,
stick-to-it-ive-ness, the second.”

I do not believe you will find “ go-at-it-ive-ness,”

r “stick-to-it-ive-ness’ in Webster’s Dictionary, or in
Worcester’s either, but they are easy words to remem-
ber, and contain ideas which, if put in practice, will
be worth more than a little to you.

Again, these eighty-three business men all insist on
one other quality which must always go with hard
work in winning true success; namely, Honesty strict
integrity.

The letters vary in many ways, but they all agree
in this. Remember, it isn’t one minister alone who
says that you must be honest if you would be truly
prosperous. If J said it you might suspect that I was
in league with your fathers and teachers and your
own ministers; but eighty-three business men, men
like those for whom you work, and like those whose
places you expect to fill some day, say to you:

“The prime requisite of true success in business is
honesty.”

OUR BUSINESS BOYS,

These men have kept their eyes wide open during
long and prosperous business careers; they know the
difference between true success and a seeming suc-
cess, which is a very false and hollow affair; they are
not blinded by the temporary dust and straws which
blow about the commercial streets; they have
watched many boys from their cradles; they have
seen the first slight temptations to dishonesty yielded
to or resisted; they are speaking not of theories, but
of what they know when they say to you: “You

- must be true, if you would succeed.”

“ All my success in forty-three years of business
life, has depended on this principle,” says one
wealthy man.

“T care not what egpeciie business or occupa-
tion or trade a young man engages in, if he knows
his business, has any brains and sticks to it, he will
succeed, provided he is honest; the foundation of
the structure is ¢ruth. I consider this the most
essential of all virtues, for it aids all others,” says
another.

“T have always been just as careful to pay a debt
of fifty cents as of fifty dollars,” says another.

“T have never known dishonesty successful in the
long run,” says another. :

“J have watched many tricky and apparently suc-
cessful men, who have had wide experience ; but the
bottom of a dishonest fortune always drops out,
sooner or later,” says still another.

Many of those who have written to me have given
much more good advice which I would like to present
to you, but it can all be condensed into the following
motto:

Find out what you are fitted for; work hard at that
one thing, and keep an honest heart.

I suppose some of you are in the high school, and
just before your class graduates you will choose a
class motto; and some of you will have it engraved
on a gold ring to wear on your finger. Is not this a
good private motto for each one of you to adopt,
which the merchants of Portland have coined for you
out of their own experience? But I hope you will
engrave it upon your souls, so that you may never
lose it, rather than upon a golden ring:

find out what you are fitted for; work hard at that
one thing, and keep an honest heart,