The successful man wil see just so much more than his neighbours as they wil be able to see too when it is shown them, but not enough to puzzle them. It is

far safer to know too little than too much. People wil condemn the one, though they wil resent being cal ed upon to exert themselves to fol ow the other.The best example of Mr Pontifex's good sense in matters connected with his business which I can think of at this moment is the revolution which he effected in the style of advertising works published by the firm. When he first became a partner one of the firm's advertisements ran thus:-"Books proper to be given away at this Season.--"The Pious Country Parishioner, being directions how a Christian may manage every day in the course of his whole life with safety and

success; how to spend the Sabbath Day; what books of the Holy

Scripture ought to be read first; the whole method of education; Page 11

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col ects for the most important virtues that adorn the soul; a

discourse on the Lord's Supper; rules to set the soul right in

sickness; so that in this treatise are contained al the rules

requisite for salvation. The 8th edition with additions. Price 10d. *** An al owance wil be made to those who give them away."Before he had been many years a partner the advertisement stood as fol ows:--"The Pious Country Parishioner. A complete manual of Christian Devotion. Price 10d. A reduction wil be made to purchasers for gratuitous distribution."What a stride is made in the foregoing towards the modern standard, and what intel igence is involved in the perception of the unseemliness of the old style, when others did not perceive it!Where then was the weak place in George Pontifex's armour? I suppose in

the fact that he had risen too rapidly. It would almost seem as if a transmitted education of some generations is necessary for the due enjoyment of great wealth. Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime. Nevertheless a certain kind of good fortune general y attends self-made men to the last. It is their children of the first, or first and second, generation who are in greater danger, for the race can no more repeat its most successful

performances suddenly and without its ebbings and flowings of success than the individual can do so, and the more bril iant the success in any one generation, the greater as a general rule the subsequent exhaustion until time has been al owed for recovery. Hence it oftens happens that

the grandson of a successful man wil be more successful than the son--the spirit that actuated the grandfather having lain fal ow in the son and

being refreshed by repose so as to be ready for fresh exertion in the grandson. A very successful man, moreover, has something of the hybrid in him; he is a new animal, arising from the coming together of many unfamiliar elements and it is wel known that the reproduction of abnormal growths, whether animal or vegetable, is irregular and not to be depended upon, even when they are not absolutely sterile.And certainly Mr Pontifex's success was exceedingly rapid. Only a few

years after he had become a partner his uncle and aunt both died within a few months of one another. It was then found that they had made him

their heir. He was thus not only sole partner in the business but found himself with a fortune of some 30,000 pounds into the bargain, and this was a large sum in those days. Money came pouring in upon him, and the

faster it came the fonder he became of it, though, as he frequently said, he valued it not for its own sake, but only as a means of providing for his dear children.Yet when a man is very fond of his money it is not easy for him at al times to be very fond of his children also. The two are like God and

Mammon. Lord Macaulay has a passage in which he contrasts the pleasures which a man may derive from books with the inconveniences to which he may be put by his acquaintances. "Plato," he says, "is never sul en. Cervantes is never petulant. Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante never stays too long. No difference of political opinion can alienate

Cicero. No heresy can excite the horror of Bossuet." I dare say I might differ from Lord Macaulay in my estimate of some of the writers he has

named, but there can be no disputing his main proposition, namely, that we need have no more trouble from any of them than we have a mind to,

whereas our friends are not always so easily disposed of. George Page 12

Butler, Samuel: The Way of All Flesh

Pontifex felt this as regards his children and his money. His money was never naughty; his money never made noise or litter, and did not spil

things on the tablecloth at meal times, or leave the door open when it went out.