was that all these estates should be his again; he had formed his plan too, which he instantly began to execute. He walked hastily forward, determined to seize the very first opportunity, of however humble a kind, to gain any money, though it were ever so despicable a trifle, and resolved absolutely not to spend, if he could help it, a farthing of whatever he might obtain. The first thing that drew his attention was a heap of coals shot out of carts on the pavement before a house. He offered himself to shovel or wheel them into the place where they were to be laid, and was employed. He received a few pence for the labor; and then, in pursuance of the saving part of his plan, requested some small gratuity of meat and drink, which was given him. He then looked out for the next thing that might chance to offer; and went with indefatigable industry through a succession of servile employments, in different places, of longer and shorter duration, still scrupulously avoiding, as far as possible, the expense of a penny. He promptly seized every opportunity which could advance his design, without regarding the meanness of occupation or appearance. By this method he had gained, after considerable time, money enough to purchase, in order to sell again, a few cattle, of which he had taken pains to understand the value. He speedily but cautiously turned his first gains into second advantages; retained without a single deviation his extreme parsimony; and thus advanced by degrees into larger transactions and incipient wealth. I did not hear or have forgotten the continued course of his life; but the final result was that he more than recovered his lost possessions, and died an inveterate miser, worth £60,000. I have always recollected this as a single instance, though in an unfortunate and ignoble direction, of decisive character, and of the extraordinary effect which, according to general laws, belongs to the strongest form of such a character."

The man who is without decision of character, and who does very little harm and never any good, usually passes among his neighbors as "a mighty good sort of a man." He is usually very regardful of forms and ceremonies, and if he writes to you, though you have but the slightest acquaintance with him, he begins with "Dear Smith" or "Dear Jones," as the case may

be, and ends with, "I am, dear sir, your ever sincere and affectionate friend, and most obedient humble servant." He does not talk much, but he has a "Yes," or a "True, sir," or "You are right, sir," for every word that is uttered, which with those interminable talkers one occasionally meets in society makes him pass for a sensible as well as a mighty good sort of a man. He has got such a habit of assenting to everything advanced in company that he forgets what it is about, and will contradict himself five times in as many minutes, by his approval of opposite sentiments expressed to different members of the company. As the weather is a favorite topic with the mighty good sort of a man, you can make him agree that it is very cold, very hot, very cloudy, all in the same hour. He is so polite that he will keep you standing half an hour uncovered in the rain, rather than step in your carriage before you; and the dinner invariably grows cold before you are seated, if you endeavor to place him at the upper end of the table.

These men are but little better than blanks in creation. If they are not unjust stewards, they are certain to be reckoned unprofitable servants.

THE MAN OF BUSINESS

M

Method

By HENRY HARDWICKE

Fuller

ETHOD facilitates every kind of business. quaintly says: "Marshal thy notions into a handsome method. One will carry twice more weight packed up in bundles, than when it lies flapping and hanging about his shoulders." His words are true. He who would succeed in business, or in anything, must be methodical. No matter what his calling, he must master all its details and bearings, instruments and applications.

The best and quickest way to 'do things is to do one thing at a time, and in our work there is usually a progressive transition from one step to another. Each step should be taken in the order in which it comes. It has been well said that dispatch is the life of business, and that method is the soul of dispatch. The best men of business are noted for method and dispatch in the transaction of their affairs. Bulwer wisely says: "Every great man exhibits the talent of organization or construction, whether it be a poem, a philosophical system, a policy, or a strategy-and without method there is no organization nor construction." Talleyrand, who was celebrated for the method which he observed in the management of his affairs, said in his terse way: "Methods are the masters." We have, however, the greatest example of method set us by God, in the regularity with which all created things perform their functions. If the sun should be as unpunctual in rising every morning as many of our business men are in the performance of their engagements, infinite disorder would be the

inevitable result. The heavens themselves and the planets observe degree, priority and place, course, proportion, season, office, and custom, all in line of order. Southey says: “Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security of the state. As the beams to a house, as the bones to the body, so is order to all things.”

We never fully appreciate order until we see it contrasted with its opponent disorder. Hazlitt, who was often the victim of disorder, says: "There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books and papers in order—that is, according to their notions of the matter—and hiding things, lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor anybody else can find them. If anything is left where you want it, it is called litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery, as well as in the gravest concerns. One complained that whenever his maidservant had been in his library, he could not get comfortably to work again for several days.”

Coleridge, speaking of the value of method, says: “It would, indeed, be superfluous to attempt a proof of the importance of method in the business and economy of active or domestic life. From the cotter's hearth, or the workshop of the artisan, to the palace or the arsenal, the first merit, that which admits neither substitute nor equivalent, is that everything is in its place. Where this charm is wanting, every other merit loses its name or becomes an additional ground of accusation and regret. Of one by whom it is eminently possessed, we say proverbially, he is like clockwork. The resemblance extends beyond the point of regularity, and yet falls short of the truth. Both do, indeed, at once divide and announce the silent and otherwise undistinguishable lapse of time. But the man of methodical industry and honorable pursuits does more; he realizes its ideal divisions, and gives a character and individuality to its moments. If the idle are described as killing time, he may be justly said to call it into life and moral being, while he makes it the distinct object not only of the consciousness, but of the conscience. He organizes the hours, and gives them a soul; and that the very essence of which is to fleet away, and ever more to have been, he takes up into his own permanence

and communicates to it the imperishableness of a spiritual nature. Of the good and faithful servant, whose energies, thus directed, are thus methodized, it is less truly affirmed that he lives in time, than that time lives in him. His days, months, and years, as the stops and punctual marks in the records of duties performed, will survive the wreck of worlds, and remain extant when time itself shall be no more."

Much has been said by the unthinking portion of mankind against routine and red tape, or rather the abuse of the latter; but if properly used it has much to do with success. Curran, when master of the rolls, once told Grattan that he would be the greatest man of his age if he would buy a few yards of red tape and tie up his bills and papers.

The duke of Wellington was very methodical in his habits. His dispatches are the best evidence of his well-regulated mind in education. It would be difficult to find letters more temperately or more perspicuously expressed than those celebrated documents. They show what immense results in the aggregate were obtained by him, solely by virtue of habits which he had assiduously cultivated from childhood-early rising, the strictest attention to details, taking nothing for granted which he could ascertain for himself, unceasing industry, and silence except when speech was necessary or certainly harmless. His early habit of what he considered punctuality is illustrated by the following anecdote: "I will take care to be punctual at five to-morrow morning," said the engineer of New London bridge, in acceptance of the duke's request that he would meet him at that hour the following morning. "Say a quarter before five," replied the duke, with a quiet smile; "I owe all I have achieved to being ready a quarter of an hour before it was deemed necessary to be so; and I learned that lesson when a boy."

The duke's bedchamber at Apsley House was not regarded, by those who saw it, with its plain appointments, as a chamber of indolence. It was narrow, shapeless, and poorly lighted; the bedstead small, provided only with a mattress and a bolster, and scantily curtained with green silk; the only ornaments of the walls were an unfinished sketch, two cheap prints of military men, and a small portrait in oil; yet here slept the great duke,