266

rather than by the way you serve the rich woman who
wants to buy a lace collar for her poodle dog. Any
boy will probably be polite to the rich woman, or to
the poodle dog, for that matter, if it had the money;
it is only the veal gentleman who will take just as
much pains to please the pin customer. Sooner or
later your employer will feel your quality ; sooner or
later you will feel his estimate in the scale of promo-
tion and salary.

There is another very important quality for busi-

ness boys, which my correspondents call by different:

names, but to which most of them allude in some way,

This quality make the old suit of clothes do for
another winter, if a new suit cannot be well afforded;
it puts up with a Waterbury watch when the boy
wants a hundred-dollar hunter; it gets him out of
bed at six o’clock in the morning, when he wants to
lie until seven; it leads him to shovel snow in the
winter and carry papers all the year round, so as to
help his widowed mother pay the house rent ; it pre-
vents him from buying his bunch of cigarettes, so
that he may carry home a dozen oranges to his sick
sister. In fact, it accomplishes a thousand other things,
and, for lack of a better name, we will call it Sef
denial; and it is the quality which any good business
man would consider in you were he contemplating
your probabilities in the direction of promotions and
partnerships. It is an important factor in the prob-
lem whether a clerk is likely to become a capitalist.

Here is a letter upon this subject, which I will
give to you just as it came tome. It is from a dis-
tinguished man, whom a great many temperance
people like, and a great many rumsellers hate, and
as he told me I need not conceal it, I will sign his
name to the letter : —

My DEAR MR. CLARK:

The key to success in any department of life is self-denial.
This means living with reference to the future and not for the
pleasure of the moment. Idleness, laziness, sensual indulgence.
involving wasteful expenditures, come from lack of self-denial.
Industry, promptitude, economy, followed by thrift and a suc-
cessful career, come from self-denial. The young fail in life,
and must ever fail, who lack self-denial. Drinking, smoking,
and other bad habits and unnecessary expenditures, all come
from lack of self-denial. Ifa man, young or old, lives for pres-
ent gratification, he cannot have a successful future. If one
desires that he must aim for it, keep his eye fixed upon it, and
avoid everything that will hinder him in the pursuit of it.

Truly yours,
Neat Dow.

Another of the business men of Portland in speak-

OUR BUSINESS BOYS.

ing of various dangers which beset boys, writes the
single word: “ Side-shows,”

He did not explain his meaning, but I will tell you
what I think he meant by it.

You have all been at some great fair or agricultural
show, where, besides the main building in which the
fair was held, there were several other buildings or
tents, covered all over the outside with flaming pictures
of the “ Fat Woman ” and the “ Living Skeleton” and
the “Human Midget and an impossible boa-constrictor
swallowing an impossible sheep, and the “ Albino Chil-
dren,” with their long white hair, and ever so many other
wonders. The admission to this side-show tent, you
remember, was ‘‘only ten cents,” whereas you had to
pay twenty-five or fifty cents to go into the fair
grounds, and so you concluded you would go into the
side-show, and see the fat woman and the skeleton
man, and the snake swallow the sheep. But when
you got in you found that the attractions of the side-
show were all on the outside; the fat woman wasn’t
nearly so fat, or the skeleton so thin, as they were
painted, nor could the latter draw himself out in long
sections, flute fashion, as the picture represented.
Moreover, the Albinos were very ordinary girls, with
fluffy hair, and the snake was stuffed, nor could he have
swallowed a sheep if he had not been. In short, the
side-show wasn’t what it was represented; the best
part of it was on the outside, and, as you had spent
ten cents, you had not enough left to pay for the
entrance ticket to the fair, so you lost all that

was really good, and saw nothing worth secing, after

all.

I think this side-show tent represents, as my corre-
spondent indicated, a real danger in every boy’s
life; and other business men mentioned some of the
particular “ side-shows” which you must guard against.
For instance, there is the “Variety Theatre Side-
show.” If there is no other objection to it, there is this
to be said, that it often distracts the minds of the boys
from their regular work or study, and makes them
less fit for the real business of life. It has all the
marks of a side-show. It doesn’t cost a great deal to
attend once, but the thirty-five cents or fifty cents, or
a dollar, spent for the theatre ticket, prevents your
buying the valuable book you want, or attending the
really useful lecture. Most of its attractions are on
the outside —the electric light, the flaming: poster,
the wonderful handbill; and there is frequently noth-
ing within that at all comes up to the announcement,
and when you have epent your money, you find that