The Project Gutenberg EBook of John Jacob Astor, by Elbert Hubbard

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Title: John Jacob Astor

Author: Elbert Hubbard

Posting Date: July 20, 2008 [EBook #412]
Release Date: January, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN JACOB ASTOR ***

Produced by Charles Keller

LITTLE JOURNEYS
TO THE HOMES OF
GREAT BUSINESS MEN

BY

ELBERT HUBBARD

JOHN J. ASTOR

The man who makes it the habit of his life to go to bed at nine
o'clock, usually gets rich and is always reliable. Of course, going to
bed does not make him rich--I merely mean that such a man will in all
probability be up early in the morning and do a big day's work, so his
weary bones put him to bed early. Rogues do their work at night.
Honest men work by day. It's all a matter of habit, and good habits in
America make any man rich. Wealth is a result of habit.

--JOHN JACOB ASTOR

LITTLE JOURNEYS

Victor Hugo says, "When you open a school, you close a prison."

This seems to require a little explanation. Victor Hugo did not have
in mind a theological school, nor yet a young ladies' seminary, nor an
English boarding-school, nor a military academy, and least of all a
parochial institute. What he was thinking of was a school where
people--young and old--were taught to be self-respecting, self-reliant
and efficient--to care for themselves, to help bear the burdens of the
world, to assist themselves by adding to the happiness of others.

Victor Hugo fully realized that the only education that serves is the
one that increases human efficiency, not the one that retards it. An
education for honors, ease, medals, degrees, titles,
position--immunity--may tend to exalt the individual ego, but it
weakens the race and its gain on the whole is nil.

Men are rich only as they give. He who gives great service, gets great
returns. Action and reaction are equal, and the radiatory power of the
planets balances their attraction. The love you keep is the love you
give away.

A bumptious colored person wearing a derby tipped over one eye, and a
cigar in his mouth pointing to the northwest, walked into a hardware