attitude of character is an acid
which will destroy all success. Keep yourself sweet, no matter how
snail-like your progress has been, no matter how paltry your apparent
achievements. If you are already soured on men and the world, change
that condition by a persistent habit of optimism. All death shows an
acid reaction. Hopefulness is the alkaline in character.

Make "looking on the bright side" a habit. It can be done. Mingle with
people as much as possible--especially with the young and buoyant and
beautifully hopeful. Be a part of passing events. Read the daily
newspapers. Form the habit of picking out the brighter aspects of
occurrences. There is an astonishing tonic in the daily newspaper.
When you read it, the blood of the world's great vitality is pouring
through you.

I know a man who is now a millionaire, but who at the age of forty
was without a dollar. He is now not over fifty-five. He had spent all
those forty years watching for his opportunity--aye, getting ready for
it. When it came, his beak was sharpened, his talons keen as needles
and strong as steel, and he swooped down upon that opportunity like a
bird of prey.

"No," said he, "I did not get discouraged. I was living, and my wife
and children were living; and Vanderbilt was not doing any more than
that, after all. I felt all the time that I was getting ready. I
worked a good deal harder than I have since I achieved my fortune.
Somehow, up to the time it came I had not felt equal to my chance; for
I knew that my opportunity would be a large one when it came, and I
knew that it would come. It did come."

Business men said for the first two or three years, "What a change of
luck Mr. ---- has had! But he is not equal to it. He has never
accomplished anything heretofore."

Yes, but he had been getting ready. He had been saving vitality,
building up character, indexing and pigeonholing experiences,
accumulating and systematizing a long-continued series of observations
and all the potentialities of intellect and personality out of which,
when applied to proper conditions, success alone is forged.

And so he gathered to himself great riches, and the poor man of a few
years ago is now--of course, of course, and alas! if you like--a
member of one of the most powerful trusts in the country.

Get yourself into the current of Circumstance--"in the swim," as the
colloquialism has it. A man of large experience and important
achievement said to me not long