ngs, than by open and flagrant offenses, that men come short of
excellence. There is always a right and a wrong; and, if you ever
doubt, be sure you take not the wrong. Observe this rule, and every
experience will be to you a means of advancement.

CHAPTER XX

BUSINESS AND BRAINS.

Many, prompted no doubt by a feeling of envy, are apt to sneer at the
culture and mental ability of the men who have won in business. "Dumb
luck," "mean plodding," "the robbery of employees," these and other
reasons are assigned by the unreasoning and uncharitable for the
prosperity of men who won with fewer advantages than themselves.

Every student of the world's progress knows that business men have
done even more than great authors for the advance of civilization.
And we all know, though the world is apt to kneel to military idols,
that inventors have done far more than have soldiers for the good of
humanity.

The man who succeeds in commerce, trade, or manufactures, thereby
shows a foresight and executive ability that would surely have
commanded success in any other calling. Men who know books and
nothing else are apt to imagine that the merchant, whose life is
devoted to facts, figures, and results, must by reason of that be
wanting in the higher intellectual faculties. Nor is this belief
wholly confined to authors in America.

Hazlitt, in one of his clever essays, represents the man of business
as a mean sort of person put in a go-cart, yoked to a trade or
profession; alleging that all he has to do is, not to go out of the
beaten track, but merely to let his affairs take their own course.
"The great requisite," he says, "for the prosperous management of
ordinary business is the want of imagination, or of any ideas but
those of custom and interest on the narrowest scale." but nothing
could be more one-sided, and in effect untrue, than such a
definition. Of course, there are narrow-minded men of business, as
there are narrow-minded scientific men, literary men and legislators;
but there are also business men of large and comprehensive minds,
capable of action on the very largest scale. As Burke said in his
speech on the India bill, he knew statesmen who were peddlers, and
merchants who acted in the spirit of statesmen.

If we take into account the qualities necessary for the successful
conduct of any important undertaking--that it requires special
aptitude, promptitude of action on emergencies, capacity for
organizing the l