ed it." "What business are you in?" "I kept a store here for
twenty years, and never made over a thousand dollars in the whole twenty
years."

"Well, then, you can measure the good you have been to this city by what
this city has paid you, because a man can judge very well what he is
worth by what he receives; that is, in what he is to the world at this
time. If you have not made over a thousand dollars in twenty years in
Philadelphia, it would have been better for Philadelphia if they had
kicked you out of the city nineteen years and nine months ago. A man has
no right to keep a store in Philadelphia twenty years and not make at
least five hundred thousand dollars even though it be a corner grocery
up-town." You say, "You cannot make five thousand dollars in a store
now." Oh, my friends, if you will just take only four blocks around you,
and find out what the people want and what you ought to supply and set
them down with your pencil and figure up the profits you would make if
you did supply them, you would very soon see it. There is wealth right
within the sound of your voice.

Some one says: "You don't know anything about business. A preacher never
knows a thing about business." Well, then, I will have to prove that I
am an expert. I don't like to do this, but I have to do it because my
testimony will not be taken if I am not an expert. My father kept a
country store, and if there is any place under the stars where a man
gets all sorts of experience in every kind of mercantile transactions,
it is in the country store. I am not proud of my experience, but
sometimes when my father was away he would leave me in charge of the
store, though fortunately for him that was not very often. But this did
occur many times, friends: A man would come in the store, and say to me,
"Do you keep jack knives?" "No, we don't keep jack-knives," and I went
off whistling a tune. What did I care about that man, anyhow? Then
another farmer would come in and say, "Do you keep jack knives?" "No,
we don't keep jack-knives." Then I went away and whistled another tune.
Then a third man came right in the same door and said, "Do you keep
jack-knives?" "No. Why is every one around here asking for jack-knives?
Do you suppose we are keeping this store to supply the whole
neighborhood with jack-knives?" Do you carry on your store like that
in Philadelphia? The difficulty was I had not then learned that the
foundation of godliness and the foundation pri