to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags." "Real glory Springs from the silent conquest of ourselves, CHAPTER VII. BUSINESS MANNERS. Manners makyth man. WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM. Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes wherever he goes. He has not the trouble of earning or owning them: they solicit him to enter and possess. EMERSON. Among the qualities of mind and heart which conduce to worldly success, there is no one the importance of which is more real, yet which is so generally underrated at this day by the young, as courtesy, that feeling of kindness, of love for our fellows, which expresses itself in pleasing manners. PROF. MATHEWS. -- n O elaborate chapter on this subject need be written: every one understands something of the value of good manners to the business man, however poorly he may exemplify his knowledge by his own practice. Here is a habit, an indispensable requisite of the man who must appeal to the public for his living, if not for his competence or fortune, which should be assiduously cultivated. It is not necessary to have all the dainty grace, much less the highly trained, high-bred style of a Chesterfield; but it is, nevertheless, well to observe the suggestion of this celebrated authority on etiquette, in his letters to his son. Said the noble Lord: "You had better return a dropped fan genteelly than give a thousand pounds awkwardly; and you had better refuse a favor gracefully than grant it clumsily. All your Greek can never advance you from secretary to envoy, or from envoy to ambassador; but your address, your air, your manner, if good, may." Hawthorne, the American novelist, was a man of very dif ferent character,—not at all a man of society, and a being so shy of his fellows that he once recorded in his journal his gladness that he had actually accomplished a journey to the post-office, and back to his room, without meeting a single person! Yet he also wrote: "God may forgive sins; but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.” "The fly hath a spleen, and the little bee a sting." So runs an old proverb. Its meaning is that persons apparently very insignificant may do much harm, or give one considerable trouble, as enemies. To similar effect is the more modern popular saying: "It is better to have the good-will of a dog than his ill-will.” And speaking of bees, let the remark of the naturalist be recorded and remembered, that this lively insect will not sting a portion of the skin that is smeared with honey. The lesson of this, too, in human life, and especially in business affairs, is evident. "Politeness in shop-keepers," wrote Madam Celnart, a lady of a nation which has the politest shop-keepers in the world, "is the road to fortune." Another comical illustration of this is that of the common soldier on the battle-field, who bowed so respectfully to his superior officer that a cannon-ball, which would have taken off his head, simply brushed his hair. Another and more apt one is that of the childless old lady of fortune, who bestowed at her death a large legacy upon the children of a grocer, who had shown. her great civility in her transactions with him. Professor Mathews tells a remarkable story of an inveterate miser, who, notwithstanding all his meanness and closeness, gave hundreds of pounds to promote the advancement of an officer by whose manners he had been captivated. He adds some other interesting examples in the following: "Hundreds of men have owed their station in life wholly to their winning address. Thank you, my dear,' said Lundy Foot to the little beggar-girl who bought a pennyworth of snuff. Thank you, my dear; please call again,' made Lundy Foot a millionaire. Some years ago, a dry-goods salesman in a London shop had acquired such a reputation for courtesy and exhaustless patience, that it was said to be impossible to provoke from him any expression of irritability, or the smallest symptom of vexation. A lady of rank, hearing of his wondrous equanimity, determined to put it to the test, by all the annoyances with which a veteran shop visitor knows how to tease a shopman. She failed in the attempt, and thereupon set him up in business. He rose to eminence in the haberdashery trade, and the mainspring of his later, as of his early, career was politeness. It is related of the late Mr. Butler, of Providence, Rhode Island, that he was so obliging as to re-open his store one night solely to supply a little girl with a spool of thread which she wanted. The incident took wind, brought him a large run of custom, and he died a millionaire, after subscribing $40,000 toward founding a hospital for the insane, a sum which he was persuaded to give by Miss Dix, whom he was too polite to shake off, though almost as penurious as she was persevering." All writers upon business topics are explicit in their commendation of this high quality of a good manner. Even the newspapers join in the attempt to educate the youth and business men of the country in true courtesy. A paragraph in one of them falls under our eye as we are preparing this book, as follows: "Few things go further in aiding the establishment of a successful business than considerate and gentlemanly treatment of customers. It is the cheapest kind of an investment, yet yields the largest returns. This will be readily admitted by all who have been long in trade, if the subject is brought to their consideration; yet it is one of the very things that not only clerks but even proprietors are apt to forget. It rarely occurs to them to look at it in the same way as does the man on the other side of the counter. As a prac |