e to look at them, and because one day I might have a
caprice to read them. (Berkeley, even thy turn may come!) In short, I
want them because I want them. And shall I be deterred from possessing
them by the fear of some sequestered and singular person, some person
who has read vastly but who doesn't know the difference between a J.S.
Muria cigar and an R.P. Muria, strolling in and bullying me with the
dreadful query: "_Sir, do you read your books?_"

Therefore I say: In buying a book, be influenced by two considerations
only. Are you reasonably sure that it is a good book? Have you a
desire to possess it? Do not be influenced by the probability or the
improbability of your reading it. After all, one does read a certain
proportion of what one buys. And further, instinct counts. The man who
spends half a crown on Stubbs's "Early Plantagenets" instead of going
into the Gaiety pit to see "The Spring Chicken," will probably be the
sort of man who can suck goodness out of Stubbs's "Early Plantagenets"
years before he bestirs himself to read it.

VII

SUCCESS

CANDID REMARKS

There are times when the whole free and enlightened Press of the
United Kingdom seems to become strangely interested in the subject of
"success," of getting on in life. We are passing through such a period
now. It would be difficult to name the prominent journalists who have
not lately written, in some form or another, about success. Most
singular phenomenon of all, Dr. Emil Reich has left Plato, duchesses,
and Claridge's Hotel, in order to instruct the million readers of a
morning paper in the principles of success! What the million readers
thought of the Doctor's stirring and strenuous sentences I will not
imagine; but I know what I thought, as a plain man. After taking due
cognizance of his airy play with the "constants" and "variables" of
success, after watching him treat "energetics" (his wonderful new
name for the "science" of success) as though because he had made it
end in "ics" it resembled mathematics, I thought that the sublime and
venerable art of mystification could no further go. If my
fellow-pilgrim through this vale of woe, the average young man who
arrives at Waterloo at 9.40 every morning with a cigarette in his
mouth and a second-class season over his heart and vague aspirations
in his soul, was half as mystified as I was, he has probably ere this
decided that the science of success has all the disadvantages of
algebra wi