I thought it might be helpful to young men just beginning to work and anxious to stop.

You know, many a man realises late in life that if when he was a boy he had known what he knows now, instead of being what he is he might be what he won’t; but how few boys stop to think that if they knew what they don’t know instead of being what they will be, they wouldn’t be? These are awful thoughts.

At any rate, I’ve been gathering hints on how it is they do it.

One thing I’m sure about. If a young man wants to make a million dollars he’s got to be mighty careful about his diet and his living. This may seem hard. But success is only achieved with pains.

There is no use in a young man who hopes to make a million dollars thinking he’s entitled to get up at 7.30, eat Force and poached eggs, drink cold water at lunch, and go to bed at 10 p.m. You can’t do it. I’ve seen too many millionaires for that. If you want to be a millionaire you mustn’t get up till ten in the morning. They never do. They daren’t. It would be as much as their business is worth if they were seen on the street at half-past nine.

And the old idea of abstemiousness is all wrong. To be a millionaire you need champagne, lots of it and all the time. That and Scotch whisky and soda: you have to sit up nearly all night and drink buckets of it. This is what clears the brain for business next day. I’ve seen some of these men with their brains so clear in the morning, that their faces look positively boiled.

To live like this requires, of course, resolution. But you can buy that by the pint.

Therefore, my dear young man, if you want to get moved on from your present status in business, change your life. When your landlady brings your bacon and eggs for breakfast, throw them out the window to the dog and tell her to bring you some chilled asparagus and a pint of Moselle. Then telephone to your employer that you’ll be down about eleven o’clock. You will get moved on. Yes, very quickly.

Just how the millionaires make the money is a difficult question. But one way is this. Strike the town with five cents in your pocket. They nearly all do this; they’ve told me again and again (men with millions and millions) that the first time they struck town they had only five cents. That seems to have given them their start. Of course, it’s not easy to do. I’ve tried it several times. I nearly did it once. I borrowed five cents, carried it away out of town with an awful rush. If I hadn’t struck a beer saloon in the suburbs and spent the five cents I might have been rich to-day.

Another good plan is to start something. Something on a huge scale: something nobody ever thought of. For instance, one man I know told me that once he was down in Mexico without a cent (he’d lost his five in striking Central America) and he noticed that they had no power plants.