The work which most of our successful men do almost staggers belief.

Fourth. Have an aim in life, or your energies will all be wasted and your most industrious days will be recklessly squandered.

Fifth. Inscribe on your banner, "Luck is a fool, Pluck is a hero."

Sixth. Don't try to begin at the top.

Seventh. Watch the littles and you will come out clear.

Eighth. Be punctual. A man who is careless about time is careless about business and cannot be trusted.

Ninth. Let your revenues always exceed your expenditures.

Tenth. Be polite. No policy pays like politeness.

Eleventh. Be upright and down square. Twelfth. Avoid whiskey and tobacco. Thirteenth. Be generous. Meanness is a most despicable blemish.

Fourteenth. Don't marry until you can support a wife.

Fifteenth. Make all the money you can honestly, and do good with it while you live. Be your own executor.

XXXV.

GET-RICH-QUICK SCHEMES.

GET-RICH-QUICK schemes flood our land today. Fortunes are offered the people for nothing. The names of scores of men prominent in church and state are published as directors, used as decoy-ducks to draw in the unsuspecting. On every hand are transparent frauds, offers to make you rich for a few dollars, land that will quadruple in a year, and so-called benevolent societies that will in a few years give you one thousand dollars for about three hundred, and meanwhile take care of you in case of sickness. The American people love to be humbugged, and schemes that would pay a legitimate interest often fall through, while the fraud gets the crowd. The only explanation of the prosperity of these transparent frauds is in Carlyle's concise census of the population-"mostly fools."

The misfortune about these schemes is that the poor man is generally the one caught in them. I have known scores of men who by long and severe struggling were enabled at

last to save something. It cost them much self-denial and care. A hundred plausible schemes present themselves, all promising a safe and large return, all demonstrating ten, twenty or thirty per cent. as certain. The pulpit speaks of the snares formed to entrap the wasteful, thoughtless, prodigal man, and it is high time that it spoke of the schemes more cunningly devised to entrap the industrious and the thrifty. Multitudes of such persons have had their all swept away, and have. passed their old age in poverty and want, rendered all the more bitter by the reflection that their suffering was the result of their credulity in trusting to the flattering tales of scheming scoundrels. Know this, that no man will give you a dollar for fifty cents, unless it is a counterfeit. Good mines never go begging for stockholders. A fine spring chicken on your plate is worth a whole flock of wild geese on the wing. Leave speculation alone to the men who can afford to lose the money. Be content with a small but certain return and run none of the risks which a great percentage usually involves. You can tell swindling schemes by their brilliant colors, plausible appearance and attractive bait. "All is not gold that glitters," and the more glittering there is the less gold in general.

XXXVI.

WEDDING PRESENTS.

ONE of the most extravagant and hypocritical customs of to-day is the habit of giving wedding presents. Hundreds of invitations are sent to acquaintances, as well as relatives and friends, and their presence is not so much desired as their presents. This is surely a successful way of begging fancy household articles. Many of the presents, being duplicated, are sold or exchanged at a sacrifice for other "more useful" articles. The largeness of a man's heart, the size of his purse and social standing are all determined by the extravagance of the present. Whether it can be afforded or not, people vie with each other, and think they must do as others do, for they would rather be out of the world than out of the fashion. Custom makes cowards of us all. Many wedding presents are never paid for, while others are bought on the instalment plan -dollar down, dollar a week. I have heard many people, and especially poorly salaried

society swells, bewail the great expense of this custom. We have frequently heard brides and grooms speak of their presents in a way which showed that the estimates of the various friendships were based on the value of the gift— speaking with delight of the generousness of the one, and condemning the unexpected meanness of the other.

Gifts should be tokens of love and good wishes, and not forced by custom. They should be free-will offerings, and not a universally expected conformity to an arbitrary unwritten law of society. Dare to break away from this hypocrisy.