e old merchant's good advice. "I am not content to eke out a thousand
or two dollars every year, and, at the age of fifty or sixty, retire
from business on a paltry twenty or thirty thousand dollars. I must get
rich fast, or not at all."

"Remember the words of Solomon, my young friend," returned the
merchant. "'_He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent._'
Among all the sayings of the wise man, there is not one truer than
that. I have been in business for thirty years, and have seen the rise
and fall of a good many 'enterprising' men, who were in a hurry to get
rich. Their history is an instructive lesson to all who will read it.
Some got rich, or at least appeared to get rich, in a very short space
of time. They grew up like mushrooms in a night. But they were gone as
quickly. I can point you to at least twenty elegant mansions, built by
such men in their heyday of prosperity, that soon passed into other
hands. And I can name to you half a dozen and more, who, when reverses
came, were subjected to trials for alleged fraudulent practices,
resorted to in extremity as a means of sustaining their tottering
credit and escaping the ruin that threatened to engulf them. One of
these, in particular, was a young man whom I raised, and who had always
acted with the most scrupulous honesty while in my store. But he was
ardent, ambitious, and anxious to get rich. His father started him in
business with ten thousand dollars capital. In a little while, he was
trading high, and pushing his business to the utmost of its capacity.
At the end of a couple of years, his father had to advance him ten
thousand dollars more to keep him from failing. During the next five
years, he expanded with wonderful rapidity, built himself a splendid
house, and took his place at the court end of the town, as one of our
wealthy citizens. It was said of him that he had made a hundred
thousand dollars. But the downfall came at last, as come I knew it
must. He toppled over and fell down headlong. Then it was discovered
that he had been making fictitious notes, purporting to be the bills
payable of country merchants, which his own credit had carried through
a number of the banks, as well as made pass freely to money-brokers. He
had to stand a long and painful trial for forgery, and came within an
ace of being sent to the State's prison. As soon as the trial closed,
he left the city, and I have never heard of him since."

"But you don't mean to in