SECRETS OF SUCCESS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2170, 20 August 1897, Page 3

SECRETS OF SUCCESS.

BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE MADE MONEY. (From "Cassell's Saturday Journal.") Biographies relating the careers of popular personages who .have risen to eminence from lowly stations not unusually contain some statement professing to give the "key-note" to the success of the individual noticed. " His watchword was 'Persevere,' " it will be stated; or "He aspired to fame and riches by devoting all his energies to each task he took in hand." Such commendable methods of getting j on in the world, while savoring rather of sameness, are deserving of every admiration. But it is when we turn to the histories of fortunate people of minor importance that we get a really remarkable selection of reasons to which success is ascribed. As an initial instance of this, nothing could well be more striking than the surprisingly candid answer of a gentleman in the horse-dealing line, who had started life pretty well in the gutter. Said he : "How do I account for my having got on in the world? I'll tell you. I was always pretty wide-awake, and I gave up picking pockets before I got caught!" A confectioner who retired on an ample fortune declared that it was lack of education that had made him. " Everybody's educated nowadays," growled he. "I ain't. I don't have to spend half my time reading books and papers so as to appear aknow-all. Therefore my mind is devoted only to business affairs. Besides that, if you're educated you have to be polite, and politeness don't pay, except to customers. I can assure you. Rough and ready, that's the motto for me ! If a man's a bit of a bear folks don't trifle with him, and he gets his own way most times he tries for it" This boorish recipe for success meets with its very opposite in the declaration of a certain professional gentleman, who, a perfect financial diplomatist, earns a splendid income as a negotiator of the most difficult proceedings—- " I put my good fortune down solely to the fact that I have always believed in the efficacy of what I may call the ' reedy' principle of ' bent but not broken.' Whatever the opposition I have had to encounter I have never openly fought stubbornly against it. I have objected with an air of complaisance, and have contested a point hand-in-hand with my adversary. My success is due to my never having stood up aggressively as a champion of the cause I was pledged to win." The individual who has won affluence by "getting the best of every deal" is a familiar figure in the ranks of self-made men.

"Little things point out the way," said one ofthese worthies recently. "If you asked me how I grew rich I shouldn't—perhaps couldn't—tell you; but if I gave you a cheque for pounds, shillings, and pence, you would find that the pence had disappeared. I only draw cheques for round sums. It saves trouble, and those pence mount up in a year, I can tell you. As long as they get the bulk of the money all right, few people demand the coppers." A former greengrocer, now a well-to-do coal merchant, laughingly relates the secret of his prosperity. " I laid the foundation of my present fortune when working a regular daily round," he confides. "And, always buying fairly good stock, I used to present it. to my customers as being the very pick of the market. 'There,' I would say, 'there's a cauliflower for you ! Perfect, perfect as a rosebud. 'Pon my word, I'm sorry I didn't keep it for my own dinner.' Treating all my wares in this way, I soon won a reputation for being a man with a wonderful knowledge of my business, and so throve accordingly."

Starting as a fifth-rate actor, one individual, meeting with scant encouragement to keep "on the boards," went into service and became a gentleman's servant. In time he rose to become valet to a nobleman, and while still in the prime of life retired and set up as proprietor of an important public-house. .. "I sometimes made eighty pounds a year in tips," he explained, "and. saving these, here I am. But I really owe my good fortune to the fact that my training for the stage enabled me to command the services of a most meaning glance. And I used that meaning glance pretty freely when guests were departing without having" 'remembered' me." A lady's maid, who now owns more than one milliner's shop, puts her goad luck down to the fact that, while being an accomplished attendant, she is not pretty. "Good-looking lady's maids are ever in want of situations." she asserts. "Mistresses don't pay you to dress them and then prove you look better than they do." There is a popular music-hall singer who attributes no small part of his success to the volume and resonance of his voice. "The last man in the gallery can hear me as well as the front man in the stalls. They all get their money's worth, and so like me." A debt collector who was remarkably efficient in raking-in outstanding accounts credited his- prestige to the halfstarved dolefulness of his demeanor. "The debtors see me pleading sadly even for 'a bit on account,' and they often argue 'Poor beggar! he'll get a little commission. It will be charity to pay him something." Total abstinene? is very often put forward as the main factor in a successful career. But over-indulgence in alcoholic liquors has been likewise instanced as equally useful. An individual who, from being a mere journeyman baker, had become suddenly a master miller, was. for the third time, charged with being drunk and disorderly. "Are you not afraid of losing your customers by such unseemly goings-on?" asked the magistrate. The flour merchant smiled. "That's how I get 'em." returned he. "I'm such good company when I'm tipsy that I make no end of friends." The proprietor of an eating-house that is a veritable little gold mine, accounts for his nourishing condition by the sad confession that he winks at petty swindles perpetrated upon him by his customers. "I take the money at the door," says he, "and trust to my patrons enumerating a correct list of the dishes they have consumed. As a matter of fact, they don't. Nearly every one of them oinits a bread, a sprouts, or some other small item. It is to do me out of this that they come hetv; but my profit on the remainder pays me well enough." A dock laborer who, when in search of a job, was not too proud to do a little begging, held somewhat similar opinions to the lady's maid above alluded to. In a few years he had put by enough money to become a dealer* in coke, and live in comparative comfort. He was an atrociously ugly man, to which fact he attributed his having worked his way up. Said he—

"When I used to beg", no end of people helped me. They o' course reasoned that 110 one would give work to a chap with a dial like mine."