to do with business, I should like to know how the character of business men can be improved or formed better than by teaching them to respect what is godlike in them, and to aspire to that which is godlike out of them. Unfortunately, people do not like being disturbed what they like is a rake with not over many prongs in it, to smooth them over a little bit at the top and keep them tidy and decent-like. They cannot bear a plough that goes right straight down and turns them inside out. It is the same with our teachers: they take you so far on the road and no farther, many prohibiting you from looking beyond, except in the orthodox manner. The best teacher is he who teaches you to do without him, takes you a certain distance and leaves you, having put the means of going farther into your own hands, if you wish to use them. Men should think more; so many remain children all their lives, more or less the slaves of prejudice. Knowledge alone can sweep away the cobwebs and mists that envelop our brains; but remember, reading is not knowledge. Solomon says, "Get knowledge, but above all get understanding." Food is useless unless digested; and you must think over and understand what you read for it to be of any service to you. Utilize others' ideas, not by slavishly following them, but altering their experience to suit your own particular need: be consistent, not bigotedly adhering to an opinion because you have expressed it, but advancing with increased knowledge and clearer light, ever searching after and following truth, and not allowing the greed of avarice to enslave you: ever desirous and anxious to qualify yourself for a higher position, yet never forgetting that the man with a contented mind is richer than any millionaire.

"What is wealth to him that still wants it and never enjoys it?"

"Extol not riches, then, the toil of fools,

The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare, more apt

To slacken virtue, and abate her edge,

Than prompt to do her aught may merit praise."

In Oliver Goldsmith's "Traveller it is said that

HORACE.

MILTON.

"Where wealth and freedom reign, contentment fails,
And honour sinks where commerce long prevails."

This view is very generally accepted, and it is to check the belief that to be an honest trader and succeed in life is impossible, that my books have been written. I have unbounded faith in the "improvability" of human nature, and believe that if the right means were adopted at

the proper time, as the brain is developing, much of the crime and social misery which surround us might be prevented; and I have no hesitation in asserting that the immense numbers of failures yearly in the United Kingdom are due mainly to ignorance by the mass of the people of the laws of commerce and finance, aided by a code of laws to relieve bankrupts of their liabilities that are a disgrace to any honourable people or nation. Being thoroughly cognizant of the difficulties in the way of success, no one is more ready to sympathize with and relieve the honest bankrupt, but I maintain that the law ought to regard all debt as a sacred trust, and before releasing the debtor should compel him to explain why, having had 20s. entrusted to him, he has only 10s. or less to pay for it. I would abolish the Bankruptcy Laws altogether, and save the expense of useless courts, officials, accountants, and lawyers. People would then be more careful whom they trusted; the honest trader would, by stopping as soon as he was in difficulties," get relief from his creditors; the dishonest would be prevented from again cheating the public till he had satisfied existing demands; whilst in every case where it could be proved goods had been obtained fraudulently, the debtor should be liable to criminal prosecution like any other thief.

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Another serious evil is over-trading, converting business into speculative gambling. It may be difficult to determine a trader's criminality, especially as regards trading beyond his capital, as between the penniless schemer, who obtains the use of capital by false pretences, and the upright trader, who never contracts greater liabilities than his estate will liquidate, there lie all gradations. By insensible steps we advance from one extreme to the other: to get more credit than would be given were the real state of their affairs known, is the aim, and the most venial transgressors cannot be wholly absolved from the criminality which so clearly attaches to the rest. Speaking broadly, the tendency is for every trader to hypothecate the capital of other traders as well as his own; and when A has borrowed on the strength of B's credit, B on the strength of C's, and C on the strength of A's; when throughout the trading world each has made engagements which he can meet only by direct or indirect aid; when everybody is wanting help from some one else to save him from falling,-a crash is certain. The punishment of a general unconscientiousness may be postponed, but it is sure to come eventually.

Why is it that the morals of trade are so bad? Why, in this civilized state of ours, is there so much that betrays the cunning selfishness of the savage? Why, after the careful inculcations of

rectitude during education, comes there in after life all this knavery? It results from the "indiscriminate respect paid to wealth." People like to be somebody, to make a name, a position-and to accumulate wealth is the surest and easiest way of fulfilling this ambition. Even he who disapproves this feeling finds himself not able to treat virtue in threadbare apparel with a cordiality as great as that which he would show to the sarae virtue endowed with prosperity. Scarcely a man is to be found who would not behave with more civility to a knave in broadcloth than to a knave in fustian; and so long as imposing worthlessness gets these visible marks of respect, it will naturally flourish, as, with the great majority of men, the visible expression of social opinion is by far the most efficient of incentives and restraints. Men would rather do something morally wrong than deviate from custom. And why? Because society generally resents. the one more than the other. Only those who have departed from the beaten track of conventionalism know what a powerful curb to men is the open disapproval of their fellows; and how, conversely, the outward applause of their fellows is a stimulus surpassing all others in intensity! Something, however, needs to be done now in the way of protest against adoration of mere success, lest the prevalent applause of mere success, together with the commercial vices which it stimulates, should be increased rather than diminished. Society can only be made better by a sterner criticism of the means through which success has been achieved, and by according honour only to the higher and less selfish modes of activity.

Another reason of the low morale of trade, or, in fact, of all ways to obtain a living, is "ignorance of the work," thereby causing losses by error of judgment, an incapacity to manage, a want of method. From want of "business habits," many industrious, well-intentioned men fail. They are industrious, but without method. They are anxious to do trade, but neglect their books; thrifty in their private habits, but they fail to see the waste by deterioration in value, and loss of interest in keeping too much stock, and in not collecting their book debts regularly. How few study "buying"! Yet to obtain the best value that is to be had, is most important, essential to success, as if you fail to get good value, how can you give it? It was from pondering over the many "wrecked" lives that had come under my notice, and from a desire to save many good men from failure, that in 1873 I circulated, gratuitously, nearly 30,000 copies of my Essay on "Business." In all my books the intention has been to prove that "honesty is the only policy," that lying and cheating of any and every kind indicates weakness of character and capacity; giving evidence of that low cunning which Nature-kind, indulgent parent-gave to

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supply the place of wisdom to the knave." My object is to make men think more about their daily work, to raise their self-respect by ennobling their vocation, to stimulate a desire for a more honourable and truthful commercial life; and if in my books the language seems too plain in some parts, the excuse must be my desire to tell business men something in such a way as will shake them out of their apathy and indifference, and make them ponder over my conclusion that "their characters are, to a great extent, in their own hand—that they make or mar themselves by what they do or leave undone."

It is necessary, however, to remind the reader that all cannot be successful; the most painful failures-and they occur every yearare old-established large concerns, that have been built up by men of business, and have failed because their successors lack the proper business capacity. Many of such men are deserving of the greatest sympathy; and all successful men should remember the moral inculcated by Dryden in "Alexander's Feast," when Philip's warlike son, aloft in awful state, a godlike hero, sat on his imperial throne. Timotheus, the skilful musician, after praising the successful warrior, by fighting, as it were, all his battles o'er again, and so rousing his pride and self-esteem that he feels capable of defying heaven and earth, suddenly changes his hand, and tries a mournful muse soft pity to infuse. He sings of Darius great and good, by too severe a fate fallen from his high estate, and weltering in his blood; deserted at his utmost need by those his former bounty fed, on the bare earth exposed he lies, with not a friend to close his eyes. With downcast eyes the joyless victor sat, revolving in his altered soul the various turns of fate below.

I have that faith in the justness of all the Creator's arrangements, that I would undertake to show cause why every man succeeds or fails, and that if all cannot succeed in making a fortune, every one might pay twenty shillings in the £. My object in writing this book is to draw attention to the subject of business education, so that by proper training fewer would fail. Meanwhile the successful should remember the following lines of Burns:

"They wha fa' in Fortune's strife

Their fate we shouldna censure;
For still the important end o' life
They equally may answer;
A man may hae an honest heart,
Tho' poortith hourly stare him,
A man may tak' a neebor's part,
Yet hae nae cash to spare him."

HEALTH.

"Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.
The wise for cure on exercise depend;

God never made His work for man to mend."

DRYDEN.

"Who is this natural beauty who advances with so much grace? The rose is on her cheeks, her breath is sweet as the morning dew, a joy tempered with modesty animates her countenance. It is Health, the daughter of Exercise and Temperance."-Hindu.

HEALTH is essential to our enjoyment of life. Who that has been ill can question that health is the one thing needful above all others in this world? As most people have been more or less ill, we should expect, therefore, that all people would avoid everything which might take away from them the blessing of health, and would never neglect anything which would preserve it to them. It is not so; disease, and its causes or remedies, is perhaps less understood than any other subject in which mankind has so great an interest; and daily facts tell a mournful tale of lives wasted by ignorance and carelessness, of life thrown away, or, if it be not lost, the foundations have been undermined, breaches made in the walls, and decay has been allowed to creep into the chambers of "this breathing-house not made with hands," by neglect of its needs, long before it falls to the earth altogether.

The master of the "house of life" is the brain, the head and centre of the nervous system; and by that system every movement of every organ of the body is directed and controlled. The mainspring of man is the brain. Like the mainspring of the machine that tells the hour, this organ regulates the movements of every wheel and pulley of his frame. But, having far higher functions to control than the machine of man's invention, the brain's rule does not stop here. The brain is not only the mainspring of time, but the mainspring of temperature also; for, in addition to its chromal force, it has thermal power-the power to heat and cool. You may find this daily exemplified in your own person, every passion and every emotion of the mind being attended by some thermal change.