hich
all real courtesy springs. There is small chance for any man to succeed
who does not command his own spirit. There is no chance whatever for
an indolent man; and, in the long run, little or no chance for the
dishonest man. The same must be said for the timid and for the rash man.
Nor can we offer any encouragement to the intermittent man. From year's
end to year's end, the dry-goods jobber finds himself necessitated to be
studying his stock and his ledger. He knows, that, while men sleep, the
enemy will be sowing tares. In his case, the flying moments are the
enemy, and bad stock and bad debts are the tares. To weed out each of
these is his unceasing care. And as both the one and the other are
forever choking the streams of income which should supply the means of
paying his own notes, his no less constant care is to provide such other
conduits as shall insure him always a full basin at the bank. Nobody but
a jobber can know the vexation of a jobber who cannot find money to cash
his notes when they are beginning to be thrown into the market at a
price a shade lower than his neighbor's notes are sold at.

In conclusion, a few material facts should be stated.

As a general proposition, it is not to be denied, that those who are
in haste to get rich will find in the dry-goods jobbing-business many
temptations and snares into which one may easily fall. A young man who
is not fortified by a faithful home-training, and by sound religious
principle, will be likely enough to degenerate into a heartless
money-maker.

While the young man who has been well trained at home, who appreciates
good manners, good morals, and good books, will derive immense advantage
in acquiring that quick discernment, that intuitive apprehension of
the rights and of the pleasure of others, and that nice tact, which
characterize the highest style of merchants,--he who has not been thus
prepared will be more than likely to mistake _brusquerie_ for manliness,
and brutality for the sublime of independence. As in a great house there
are vessels unto honor and also unto dishonor, so in the purlieus of
the dry-goods trade there are gentlemen who would honor and adorn any
society, and also men whose manners would shame Hottentots,--whose
language, innocent of all preference for Worcester or Webster, a terror
to all decent ideas, like scarecrows in corn-fields, is dressed in the
cast-off garments of the refuse of all classes.

Success in retailing does