ing than the collection of drafts? What is there to soil glove or fingers, sensibility or conscience? But this is only a specimen of the scores of ways in which "my feelings" are brought into collision with virtuous labour and honourable industry. What sphere of life is there where the education and discipline of the feelings is not of first importance? Early attention to this would prevent a foolish fastidiousness from springing up, and it would avoid a thousand volcanic eruptions in countinghouses, where feelings in one member and another cross each other, like the sea crossing into the central fires of the earth, and bidding Vesuvius to spout up its eruptions.

Strength of feeling is good. It is not necessarily an evil. It is the source of energy, promptness, and power. It aids quickness of thought, readiness of apprehension, and concentration of abilities. But, undisciplined, it is injurious. It is constantly bringing a man into painful contact unnecessarily with his fellows, and it erects false barriers to usefulness and fortune. Strength of feeling belongs to all great men. The calmness and dignity of Washington only showed that divinity of principle that ruled the storm. How perpetually, through the struggle for independence, did things come up "not agreeable to his feelings;" but he curbed and disciplined those feelings, and instead of permitting them to be a wild-horse, to bear him in seeming retreat from the battle-field of Freedom, they were as the war-horse on which he rode grandly from victory to victory.

KEEP YOUR DESIGNS TO YOURSELF.

NEVER talk of your designs till they have been accomplished, and even then the less you say the better. This is a very important caution for the merchant or man of business. Some persons are naturally so talkative, that they no sooner form a design of entering into a speculation, or following some particular branch of trade or commerce, than they take the earliest opportunity of acquainting all their friends with it. By giving way to this weakness, you put it in the power of others to forestall you, and those whose interests interfere with yours will do all they can to disappoint you, for their own advantage. In this respect, the example of Girard, the Napoleon of commerce, is worthy of all imitation. No. man ever heard him boast of what he would do. He remained quiet and silent till the time came for action, and then he struck the blow with an unerring aim, which insured him success. As a merchant, he was inquisitive, active, prompt, and sagacious, studious to learn all he could from others, and as careful to impart nothing in

return.

THE RIGHT AIM.

THE aim makes the man-the spirit, the energy, the greatness or bitterness of the character and life.

When

the merchant's aim is right, he will have something that shall survive defeat, and glorify even poverty; and, when accumulating prosperity is his, it shall not undermine his principles, nor make him insensible to the uses of wealth.

A short time since, two merchants in the same line of business in our city were conversing on the method to be adopted to make a fortune.

The one remarked, "I have been working fifteen years to establish a quality of goods, and to fix a reputation; and I shall hold to the reputation I have gained, and shall carefully keep up the quality of my manufactures."

"Pooh! answered the other, "I shall do no such thing. I'm not going to work as long as that, but am determined to make a fortune in a few years, and let the reputation go."

Here are the representatives of the two classes in the mercantile community; the one, to whom character and conscience are unspeakable wealth; the other, to whom they are nothing.

It is easy to go through the histories of our prominent merchants, and see the wisdom of the one class, and the folly of the other; for the aim of the man is not something he can always keep covered up and out of sight. It will gleam out, to shame or dignify; and shrewd business men soon discover on what principles trade is conducted by those with whom they are brought in contact. They are repelled by the discernment of the low and mean aim, as they are attracted by the noble and generous spirit of the true merchant.

Hence, though now and then to test man's regard for lofty principle, some flashy adventurer may amass a fortune speedily, yet the greater amount of success will be found, as it is found, in the department of science and discovery, with the men of generous purposes, dignifying aims, cautious, and unpresuming, addressing themselves to what is right, as well as to what promises immediate

success.

A man who goes on the policy of deception and cheating, begins by deceiving and cheating himself; and he is distinguished from the upright by the inward experience, which has more to do with the enjoyment of life than wealth or poverty-by the regard in which he is held in the community-by his influence on the young, and those connected with him in business, and by the chances of recovery from disaster, should that overtake him. "My misfortune," said a good merchant, "was made almost sweet to me by the kind expressions drawn out by it from so many of my fellow-citizens."

That is the reward of a Right Aim!

STICK TO YOUR BUSINESS.

THERE is nothing which should be more frequently impressed upon the minds of young men, than the importance of steadily pursuing some one business. The frequent changing from one employment to another is one of the most common errors committed; and to it may be

traced more than half the failures of men in business, and much of the discontent and disappointment that render life uncomfortable. It is a very common thing for a man to be dissatisfied with his business, and to desire to change it for some other, which seems to him will prove a more lucrative employment, but in nine cases out of ten it is a mistake. Look round you, and you will among your acquaintances find abundant verification of our assertion.

Here is a young man who commenced life as a mechanic, but from some cause imagined that he ought to have been a doctor; and, after a hasty and shallow preparation, has taken up the saddle-bags, only to find work is still work, and that his patients are no more profitable than his work-bench, and the occupation not a whit more agreeable.

Here are two young men, clerks; one of them is content, when his first term of service is over, to continue a clerk till he shall have saved enough to commence business on his own account; the other cannot wait, but starts off without capital, and with a limited experience, and brings up, after a few years, in a court of insolvency, while his former comrade, by patient perseverance, comes out at last with a fortune.

That young lawyer who became disheartened because briefs and cases did not crowd upon him while he was yet redolent of calf-bound volumes, and had small use for red tape-who concluded that he had mistaken his calling, and so plunged into politics, finally settled down into the character of a meddling pettifogger, scrambling for his daily bread.