A Practical Treatise on Business; Or, How to Get, Save, Spend, Give, Lend, and Bequeath Money with an Inquiry Into the Chances of Success and Causes of Failure in Business (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. BUSINESS EDUCATION?CHOICE OF A BUSINESS. " It is the great advantage of a trading nation that there are few in it so dull and heavy, who may not be placed in stations of life which may give them an opportunity of making their fortune," says Addison, truly: but, while any one may be a man of business, who is legally competent to make a contract, and while all can find in a flourishing community stations suited to their talents and disposition; to carry on an extended business successfully, requires powers of thought, and capabilities of endurance, and a vigor of constitution that few possess. Business is a " death potion" to many; and a more unhappy situation than the incongruity between the business and the capacity, can scarcely be imagined. It is a life-long torment, for which there is hardly a remedy, as a change of business or profession seldom succeeds. The world argues that he who has failed in his first profession, to which he had devoted " the morning of his life and the spring-time of his exertions," is not the most likely person to master a second. It is proper, therefore, to glance at the best temperament for a man of business?the most suitable education?and suggest a few thoughts that should have influence in the choice of a business or profession. I. It has been frequently remarked?and a late author has expressed it the most forcibly?that the best temperament for great afiairs is " a combination of the desponding and the resolute; or, as I had better express it, of the apprehensive and the resolute. Such is the temperament of great commanders. Secretly they rely upon nothing and upon nobody. There is such a powerful element of failure in all human affairs, that a shrewd man is always saying Companions of my Solitude. to himself, What sliall...