n change the title. The advice was taken,
and the article eagerly accepted by one of the very publishers who had
refused it before. Many able essays have been rejected because of poor
penmanship. We must strive after accuracy as we would after wisdom, or
hidden treasure or anything we would attain. Determine to form exact
business habits. Avoid slipshod financiering as you would the plague.
Careless and indifferent habits would soon ruin a millionaire. Nearly
every very successful man is accurate and painstaking. Accuracy means
character, and character is power.

CHAPTER XXII

DO IT TO A FINISH

Years ago a relief lifeboat at New London sprung a leak, and while
being repaired a hammer was found in the bottom that had been left
there by the builders thirteen years before. From the constant motion
of the boat the hammer had worn through the planking, clear down to the
plating.

Not long since, it was discovered that a girl had served twenty years
for a twenty months' sentence, in a southern prison, because of the
mistake of a court clerk who wrote "years" instead of "months" in the
record of the prisoner's sentence.

The history of the human race is full of the most horrible tragedies
caused by carelessness and the inexcusable blunders of those who never
formed the habit of accuracy, of thoroughness, of doing things to a
finish.

Multitudes of people have lost an eye, a leg, or an arm, or are
otherwise maimed, because dishonest workmen wrought deception into the
articles they manufactured, slighted their work, covered up defects and
weak places with paint and varnish.

How many have lost their lives because of dishonest work, carelessness,
criminal blundering in railroad construction? Think of the tragedies
caused by lies packed in car-wheels, locomotives, steamboat boilers,
and engines; lies in defective rails, ties, or switches; lies in
dishonest labor put into manufactured material by workmen who said it
was good enough for the meager wages they got! Because people were not
conscientious in their work there were flaws in the steel, which caused
the rail or pillar to snap, the locomotive or other machinery to break.
The steel shaft broke in mid-ocean, and the lives of a thousand
passengers were jeopardized because of somebody's carelessness.

Even before they are completed, buildings often fall and bury the
workmen under their ruins, because somebody was careless,
dishonest--either employer or