90 THE HOME, FARM AND BUSINESS CYCLOPAEDIA. 



the meanest, which, when one cried in amazement, " How account for so 

 doleful an end to so fair a commencement ? " solve their whole mystery 

 in this : " Damon never recovered his first fatal error ; Damon put his 

 name to a bill by which Pythias promised to pay so and so in three 

 months." 



Having settled these essential preliminaries 1. Never to borrow where 

 there is a chance, however remote, that you may not be able to repay ; 2. 

 Never to lend what you are not prepared to give ; 3. Never to guarantee 

 for another what you can not fulfil if the other should fail you start in 

 life with this great advantage : whatever you have, be it little or much, 

 is your own. Rich or poor, you start as a freeman, resolved to preserve 

 in your freedom the noblest condition of your being as a man. 



Now fix your eyes steadily on some definite end in the future. Con- 

 sider well what you chiefly wish to be ; then compute at the lowest that 

 which you are by talent, and at the highest that which you can be by 

 labour. Always under estimate the resources of talent ; always put as 

 against you the chances of luck. Then set down on the other side, as 

 against talent defective, against luck adverse, all that which can be placed 

 to the credit of energy, patience, perseverance. These last are infinite ; 

 whatever be placed against them is finite ; you are on the right side of 

 any system of book-keeping by double-entry on which a mortal may pre- 

 sume to calculate accounts with Fate. 



The finest epithet for genius is that which was applied to Newton's 

 genius, " patient." He who has patience, coupled with energy, is sure, 

 sooner or later, to obtain the results of genius ; he who has genius without 

 patience and without energy (if, indeed, such genius be a thing possible) 

 might as well have no genius at all. His works and aims, like the plants 

 of Nature before the Deluge, are characterized by the slightness of their 

 roots. 



Fortune is said to be blind, but her favourites never are. Ambition has 

 the eye of the eagle, Prudence that of the lynx ; the first looks through the 

 air, the last along the ground. 



The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who, early in life, 

 clearly discerns his object, and toward that object habitually directs his 

 powers. Thus, indeed, even genius itself is but fine observation strength- 

 ened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and re- 

 Bolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius. 



Assuming that fortune be your object, let your first efforts be not for 

 wealth, but independence. Whatever be your talents, whatever your 

 prospects, never be tempted to speculate away, on the chance of a palace, 



