the
same?"

That power to decide instantly the best course to pursue, and to
sacrifice every opposing motive; and, when once sacrificed, to silence
them forever and not allow them continually to plead their claims and
distract us from our single decided course, is one of the most potent
forces in winning success. To hesitate is sometimes to be lost. In
fact, the man who is forever twisting and turning, backing and filling,
hesitating and dawdling, shuffling and parleying, weighing and
balancing, splitting hairs over non-essentials, listening to every new
motive which presents itself, will never accomplish anything. There is
not positiveness enough in him; negativeness never accomplishes
anything. The negative man creates no confidence, he only invites
distrust. But the positive man, the decided man, is a power in the
world, and stands for something. You can measure him, gauge him. You
can estimate the work that his energy will accomplish. It is related
of Alexander the Great that, when asked how it was that he had
conquered the world, he replied, "By not wavering."

When the packet ship _Stephen Whitney_ struck, at midnight, on an Irish
cliff, and clung for a few moments to the cliff, all the passengers who
leaped instantly upon the rock were saved. The positive step landed
them in safety. Those who lingered were swept off by the returning
wave, and engulfed forever.

The vacillating man is never a prompt man, and without promptness no
success is possible. Great opportunities not only come seldom into the
most fortunate life, but also are often quickly gone.

"A man without decision," says John Foster, "can never be said to
belong to himself; since if he dared to assert that he did, the puny
force of some cause, about as powerful as a spider, may make a seizure
of the unhappy boaster the very next minute, and contemptuously exhibit
the futility of the determination by which he was to have proved the
independence of his understanding and will. He belongs to whatever can
make capture of him; and one thing after another vindicates its right
to him by arresting him while he is trying to go on; as twigs and chips
floating near the edge of a river are intercepted by every weed and
whirled into every little eddy."

The decided man not only has the advantage of the time saved from
dillydallying and procrastination, but he also saves the energy and
vital force which is wasted by the perplexed man who takes up e