Wood County Reporter

ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN

PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS TO THOSE STARTING IN BUSINESS LIFE.

Don't Aim too High. Study Your Business, Save Money and Lay it up for a Rainy Day.

The N. Y. Herald thus replies to the following letter:

I am a country boy. I came from a farm in New Hampshire to New York with the hope of making a name and a fortune. Either the fame or the fortune would satisfy me, but I prefer both if they are within reach. Will you kindly tell me how I can carve out for myself a successful career?

The results of our experience and observation are entirely at your service, young man.

Suppose we begin our conversation by defining terms. What do you mean by "a successful career?"

If, as you say, you are ambitious to become a millionaire two or three times over your chance is one in a thousand. Possibly you may be that one. It depends on your natural gifts and your opportunities. But how about the other nine hundred and ninety-nine? Are their lives to be a failure because they can't acquire an immense bulk of capital?

In other words, is a surplus of cash the prime factor in the problem of happiness, and is a citizen's usefulness to be measured by his bank account solely?

You may also get the fame you wish. It depends on your education, on the quantity and quality of your brains and on your native genius. With these everything is possible; without them, you will everlastingly hunger for the unattainable, and in the end draw the coverlid of a wasted life over your head and die a disappointed man.

The number of those who achieve such greatness that the public build monuments to their memory is very few, but if your name happens to be in that list the Herald will gladly subscribe for the purpose.

Don't make any mistakes in this matter. If you wish to get out of life all there is in it—for you—there is a way to do it.

Real happiness consists of health, self-respect, the good will of the community and a sufficient income to gratify your reasonable wants. Everything else is trivial and not worth bothering about. The man who has steady work, fair wages, a cozy home, enough to eat, a thick overcoat, and the consciousness of personal integrity, is a mightily favored fellow, in possession of more than three-quarters of the best things which this world affords.

Now, you can have all this if you make certain rules the basis of your conduct.

First—Don't aim too high, but aim straight. Emerson's advice to "hitch your wagon to a star" is the merest buncombe of rhetoric. You will produce larger practical results if you hitch your wagon to a well fed mule.

Longfellow's poem, "Excelsior," is another bit of exquisite trash. Of course it is beautiful, "and all like that, you know," but it is not adapted to a rough and tumble fight with circumstances.

"The young man in that poem shoulders a flag and starts for—well, for nowhere, so far as we can discover. He is one of the climbers—an explorer of the celestial Alps. When he gets to the top of a hill he turns back and screams out "Excelsior!" What for we can't say. This is a free country, however, and he can do as he pleases. Up he trudges until he gets to the snow-capped summit of the next ascent. Unreasonable boy! he seems to be just as dissatisfied as ever. Evidently he wants the earth. In spite of a chronic bronchitis and in constant danger of pneumonia, he waves his bunting, yells "Excelsior!" once more and strikes out for an altitude where the mercury freezes in the bulb.

He may be going yet, for aught we know. He has undertaken a tough job, though, and his flag by this time must be in tatters.

You want to get rid of a good deal of this "excelsior" folderol. It is a mighty poor investment of talent. Stay down below, and let the glaciers and the mountain peaks take care of themselves.

Second—Do your work well, no matter what it is. Study your business. Make yourself master of it by putting your head and heart into it. If it is bookkeeping, then keep books in such fashion that the Angel Gabriel will want to lend you his crown as a token of approval. If you are a mechanic, or artisan, or farmer, be proud of yourself, and the rest of the world will soon come to be proud of you. Nothing is needed so much in this generation as a man with skilled fingers. You may have a long pull, but the clock will strike an unexpected hour and the opportunity—which comes to everybody in turn, but which most people miss—will present itself. Study the bulldog, and when you get your teeth into a big thing, let them stay there.

Third—Save money. The coward runs in debt, the brave man has a five dollar surplus in his pocket. The world may laugh at you because you can't have a four-in-hand necktie. All right, let it laugh. You are your own world, and the people who sneer are simply outside barbarians. When they see that five dollar bill growing bigger they all want to shake hands with you and send you to Congress. Keep well within your income and you will save yourself from skulking round the corner like a kicked dog when the dun is on your track. The handiest thing on the planet is the penny laid up for a rainy day.

Now, young sir, get rid of the nonsense that you are a genius, settle down to the conclusion that you are just an average North American boy and start in. Keep yourself alert, look after your digestive apparatus, don't smoke cigarettes, get to bed early, be square toed in all your dealings, and we will wager a cookie that at sixty you will have to look backward for those who began the race with you did.

Are you ready? Then, Go!