in this great city--the success that moved
outside in silent limousines, that inhabited beautiful houses filled
with skilled servants, that sent its women and children, now the warm
weather advanced, into other beautiful houses by the sea. In the Sunday
supplements of the great papers he had seen pictures of these homes and
of the women who dwelt in them. There was not a face among the many that
belonged more truly in such surroundings than the face that he looked
into at his boarding-house table every day. And among the men who had
won this success were some, he knew, who had started as poor as he. He
asked only to be told their secret.

Mr. Talbert did not smile at the mention of the girl as Dick feared he
would. Instead he looked sympathetically at the long face before him.

"A girl's a good thing to work for," he said. "It keeps a man thrifty
and sober. I'm not an expert on getting rich, for such money as I have
was mostly made by my father before me. But I take it if a man is young
and strong and has an aptitude for his profession, he can still get what
he wants in these United States. But he's got to want it more than
anything else in the world, more than leisure or friends, more, perhaps,
than honor. He's got to carry his work with him, study it in the
evening, dream of it at night. He's got to live poor before he can live
rich. He must be able to use men for his own aims. He must skin or he'll
be skinned. See here, Mac," clutching at a man who was passing, "come
and give your advice to youth."

A large, comfortable looking gentleman stopped at his friend's bidding
and looked quizzically at Dick as they were introduced. He would not sit
down, and as the others were through their meal Talbert settled his
account and they all stood for a moment together.

"Have a cigar?" offering one to Dick.

"I think I won't," Dick answered. "Perhaps that's one of the things to
go slow on, eh, if I mean to succeed?"

"Yes, when it comes to buying them yourself; but never refuse a gift,"
and his new acquaintance thrust the cigar into the young man's hand.

"Here's an emigrant from the State of Georgia," Talbert said, turning to
his friend, "who is bent on becoming a millionaire. He's got health and
determination; all he asks for is advice. What's yours?"

"David Harum's golden rule," was the answer. "Do unto the other feller
the way he'd like to do unto you, and do it fust."

They made their way past the waiters bearing