WORK
“What, Mr. Mills, do you consider the key-note of success?”
“Work,” he replied, quickly and emphatically. “Work develops all the good there is in a man; idleness all the evil. Work sharpens all his faculties and makes him thrifty; idleness makes him lazy and a spendthrift. Work surrounds a man with those whose habits are industrious and honest; in such society a weak man develops strength, and a strong man is made stronger. Idleness, on the other hand, is apt to throw a man into the company of men whose object in life is usually the pursuit of unwholesome and demoralizing diversions.”
SELF-DEPENDENCE
“To what formative influence do you attribute your material success, Mr. Mills?” I asked.
“I was taught very early that I would have to depend entirely upon myself; that my future lay in my own hands. I had that for a start, and it was a good one. I didn’t waste any time thinking about succession to wealth, which so often acts as a drag upon young men. Many persons waste the best years of their lives waiting for dead men’s shoes; and, when they get them, find them entirely too big to wear gracefully, simply because they have not developed themselves to wear them.
“As a rule, the small inheritance, which, to a boy, would seem large, has a tendency to lessen his efforts, and is a great damage to him in the way of acquiring the habits necessary to success.”
HABIT OF THRIFT
“No one can acquire a fortune unless he makes a start; and the habit of thrift, which he learns in saving his first hundred dollars, is of inestimable value later on. It is not the money, but the habit which counts.
“There is no one so helpless as a man who is ‘broke,’ no matter how capable he may be, and there is no habit so detrimental to his reputation among business men as that of borrowing small sums of money. This cannot be too emphatically impressed upon young men.”