aried sausage-grinder.

On my wall, alongside my desk, I have a calendar, and the sheet
that faces me is that for the first week in March, 1916. It says
"Concentration. Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in
hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
Alexander G. Bell." That is the whole matter in a nutshell, but the
only use the motto has been to me has been to permit me to look at
it and think about it when I ought to be thinking of the story I
was trying to write.

So far as I am concerned, the most important person in the world is
myself. The most important success in the world is my success. The
most important money in the world is my money. A whole lot of the
most important debts in the world are my debts. The same is true of
you and your success and your money and your debts.

I hope you are not near fifty years old. I hope you are nearer
twenty, but whatever your age I can tell you that chasing after
goat-feathers is mighty poor business. The time to investigate
interesting by-paths is when you are on a vacation, but the New
York-Chicago Express gets there by staying on the track. The minute
it starts climbing some interesting country lane after daisies and
buttercups the coroners begin to gather and the claim agents flock
together, and some slow but sure old freight train, plugging along
on the next track but sticking to it, toots a couple of times and
passes by.

If I am ever the boss of a school board I shall insist that no child
graduate until he can foot correctly a pile of numbers four deep and
forty high, and do it the first time. I have been a bookkeeper in my
day, and I have footed a column of figures twenty times and got ten
different results. I can go up a column of figures, starting like a
race horse--"Seven and six are thirteen, and five are eighteen, and
two are twenty, and--and I wonder if I put a stamp on the letter I
mailed this morning--I wonder if Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays--I
wonder if a bomb from an airplane would go through from the roof of
my house to the cellar--cellar--cellar--well, I'm glad I've got eight
tons of coal in, but I'll have to get more in as soon as I can--and
six----" Then I have to begin at the beginning again with "Seven and
six are thirteen, and five are eighteen----"

The reason children don't get their examples right in school is
because they don't concentrate on the matter in hand, and the
reason men don't get their lives right is b