Words for the Wise Part 14

On the morning after the day upon which Lucy and her mother had been so bitterly disappointed, the former, while looking over the newspaper, called the attention of the latter to an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a young lady who was desirous of obtaining a situation as a French teacher in some private family or seminary. The advertiser represented herself as being thoroughly versed in the principles of the language, and able to speak it as well as a native of Paris. The highest testimonials as to character, education, social standing, &c. would be given.

"I think I had better do the same," Lucy said.

"It won't be of any use," replied the mother, in a tone of despondency.

"We don't know that, mother," said Lucy. "We must use the best means that offer themselves for the accomplishment of what we desire."

"There is already one advertis.e.m.e.nt for a situation such as you desire--some disappointed applicant for the place at Mr. C----'s, no doubt. It is hardly to be supposed that two more French teachers are wanted in the city."

"Let us try, mother," returned Lucy to this.

"If you feel disposed to do it, child, I have no objection," said Mrs.

Ellison; "but I shall count nothing on it."

"It is the only method that now presents itself, and I think it will be right at least to make the trial. It can do no harm."

The more Lucy thought about an advertis.e.m.e.nt, the more hopeful did she feel about the result. During the day she prepared one and sent it down to a newspaper office. Her messenger had not been long gone before the servant came up to the room where she sat with her mother, and said that a gentleman was in the parlour and wished to see them. He had sent up his card.

"Mr. Burgess!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Lucy, on taking the card from the servant's hand.

"I do not wish to see him," said Mrs. Ellison, as soon as the servant had withdrawn. "You will have to go down alone, Lucy."

Lucy descended to the parlour with reluctant steps, for she had little desire to see the man whose thoughtlessness and neglect had so cruelly wronged them. The moment she entered the parlour, Mr. Burgess stepped forward to meet her with a cheerful expression of countenance.

"Yesterday," he began immediately, "I had discouraging news for you, but I am happy to bring you a better story to-day. I have obtained a situation for you as a French teacher, in a new seminary which has just been opened, at a salary of six hundred dollars a year. If you will go with me immediately, I will introduce you to the princ.i.p.al, and settle all matters preliminary to your entering upon the duties of your station."

"I will be with you in a few minutes," was all that Lucy could say in reply, turning quickly away from Mr. Burgess and gliding from the room.

Her heart was too full for her to trust herself to say more. In a moment after she was sobbing upon her mother's bosom. It was some minutes before she could command her feelings enough to tell the good news she had just heard. When she did find utterance, and briefly communicated the intelligence she had heard, her mother's tears of joy were mingled with her own.

Lucy accompanied Mr. Burgess to the residence of the princ.i.p.al of the new seminary, and there entered into a contract for one year to teach the French language, at a salary of six hundred dollars, her duties to commence at once, and her salary to be drawn weekly if she desired it.

She did not attempt an expression of the grat.i.tude that oppressed her bosom. Words would have been inadequate to convey her real feelings.

But this was not needed. Mr. Burgess saw how deeply grateful she was, and wished for no utterance of what she felt.

That night both Mr. Burgess, as well as those he had benefited, had sweeter dreams than visited their pillows on the night preceding. The latter never knew how much they stood his debtor. He put in the advertis.e.m.e.nt which Lucy had read, and she was the person it described.

Five hundred dollars was all the princ.i.p.al of the seminary paid; the other hundred was placed in his hands by Mr. Burgess, that the salary might be six hundred.

MAKING HASTE TO BE RICH.

"CENT to cent, shilling to shilling, and dollar to dollar, slowly and steadily, like the progress of a mole in the earth! That may suit some, but it will never do for Sidney Lawrence. There is a quicker road to fortune than that, and I am the man to walk in it. 'Enterprise' is the word. Yes, enterprise, enterprise, enterprise! Nothing venture, nothing gain, is my motto."

"Slow and sure is the safer motto, my young friend, and if you will take my advice, you will be content to creep before you walk, and to walk before you run. The cent to cent and dollar to dollar system is the only sure one."

This was the language of an old merchant, who had made his fortune by the system he recommended, and was addressed to a young man just entering business with a capital of ten thousand dollars, the joint property of himself and an only sister.

Sidney Lawrence had been raised in a large mercantile establishment, that was doing an immense business and making heavy profits. But all its operations were based upon adequate capital and enlarged experience. When he commenced for himself, he could not brook the idea of keeping near the sh.o.r.e, like a little boat, and following its safer windings; he felt like launching out boldly into the ocean and reaching the desired haven by the quickest course. He wished to acc.u.mulate money rapidly, and believed that, on the capital he possessed, five or six thousand dollars a year might as easily be made as one thousand, if a man only had sufficient enterprise to push business vigorously. The careful, plodding course pursued by some, and strongly recommended to him, he despised. It was beneath a man of true business capacity.

"As I said before, nothing venture, nothing gain," replied Lawrence to the 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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 fict.i.tious 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 pa.s.s 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 insinuate," said Lawrence, rather sternly, "that I would be guilty of forgery in any extremity?"

"Sidney Lawrence!" replied the merchant, speaking in a firm, serious voice, "I am a plain-spoken man, and always tell my real mind when I feel it my duty to do so, whether I give offence or not. That Solomon spoke truly, when he said, '_He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent,_' I fully believe, because I am satisfied, from what I have seen and know of business, that whoever follows it with an eager desire to make money rapidly, will be subjected to daily temptations, and it will be almost impossible for him not to seek advantages over his neighbour in trade, and trample under foot the interests of others to gain his own. If this is done in little matters unscrupulously, it will in the end be done in great matters. What is the real difference, I should like to know, between taking advantage of a man in bargaining, and getting his money by pa.s.sing upon him a forged note? The principle is undoubtedly the same, only one is a legal offence and the other is not. And therefore, I hold that he who takes an undue advantage of his fellow man in trade, will not in the end hesitate about committing a greater wrong, if he have a fair chance of escape from penalty. In my young days, the motto of most business men, who were not very nice about the interests of others, was, '_Every man for himself and the Lord for us all._' But the motto has become slightly changed in these times. It now reads, '_Every man for himself, and the d----l take the hindmost!_' I hear this too often unblushingly avowed, but see it much oftener acted out, all around me. My young friend, if you wish to keep a clear conscience, adopt neither of these mottoes, but regard, in every transaction, the good of others as well as your own good. And let me most seriously and earnestly warn you against making haste to be rich. The least evil that can overtake you, in such an effort, will be the almost certain wreck of all your worldly hopes, some five or ten years hence, and your fall, so low, that to rise again will be almost impossible."

This well-meant, but plainly uttered advice, more than half offended Lawrence. He replied, coldly, that he thought he knew what he was about, and would try, at least, to "steer clear of the penitentiary."

With shrewdness, tact, untiring industry, and a spirit that knew no discouragement, the young man pressed forward in business. The warning of the merchant, if it did not repress his desire to get rich in haste, caused him to look more closely than he would otherwise have done into every transaction he was about to make. This saved him from many serious losses.

The want of more capital soon began to be felt. He saw good operations every day, that might be made if he had capital enough to enter into them.

"A man deserves no credit for getting rich, if he have capital enough to work with," was a favourite remark. "There is plenty of business to be done, and ways of making money in abundance, if the means are only at hand."

One week, if he had only been in the possession of means, he would have purchased a cotton-factory; the next week become possessor of a ship, and entered into the East India trade; and, the next week after that, purchased an interest in a lead-mine on the Upper Mississippi.

Money, money, more money, was ever his cry, for he saw golden opportunities constantly pa.s.sing unimproved. A neighbour, to whom he was expressing his desire for the use of larger capital, said to him, one day--

"I'll tell you how you can get more money!"

"How?" was the eager question.

"Get into the direction of some bank, push through the notes of a business friend, in whom you have confidence, who will do the same for you in another bank of which he is one of the managers. There are wheels within wheels in those moneyed inst.i.tutions, from which the few and not the many reap the most benefit. Connect yourself with as many as you can of them, and make the most of the opportunities such connections will afford. You know Balmier?"

"Yes."

"And what a rushing business he does?"

"Yes."

"He dragged heavily enough, and was always flying about for money, until he took a hint and got elected into the Citizens and Traders'

Bank. Since then he has been as easy as an old shoe, and has done five times as much business as before."

"Is it possible?"

"Oh, yes! You are not fully up to the tricks of trade yet, I see, shrewd as you are."

"I know well enough how to use money, but I have not yet learned how to get it."

"That will all come in good time. We are just now getting up a pet.i.tion for the charter of a new bank in which I am to be a director, and I can easily manage to get you in if you will subscribe pretty liberally to the stock. It is to be called the People's Bank."

"But I have no money to invest in stock. That would be taking away instead of adding to my capital in trade, which is light enough in all conscience."

"There will be no trouble about that. Only an instalment of twenty cents in the dollar will be necessary to set the inst.i.tution going. And not more than ten cents in the dollar will be called in at a time.