How to Become Rich, William Windsor [readera ebook reader txt] 📗

his deficient organs,  and gave him my special rules for the cultivation of financial ability; and after instructing him, I told him to try some of his most collectable accounts according to my rules. I remained in his town a few days longer, and before I left he called on me with a list of over six hundred dollars’ worth of claims he had collected, and he was jubilant. “There!” said he, “that is what your examination and chart has been worth to me.” And by persistently following my instructions he developed into a very good collector.

A man may be entirely idiotic in the sense which gives the desire for property and the impulse to acquire it (Acquisitiveness), while he exhibits excellent sense in other directions. I once examined a gentleman of high intellectual development who was entirely destitute of this sense, and I remarked to him that he was financially worthless, that he had no sense of value, was indifferent to the acquisition of property and utterly unable to make a living, as he would not be able to ask for money that was due him from a friend who was perfectly willing to pay him. He replied, “All you say is true, sir; my wife supports the family by sewing and washing, and I am unable to command any financial resources whatever.”

Subsequently I employed this man, as a matter of charity, to do some work for me, and returning to the city from a brief absence, I found that I owed him five dollars. I met him on the street that night and he  informed me that his family were suffering for the necessities of life. Said he, “It was a scramble at our house this morning to get anything for breakfast, and I don’t know where the next meal is coming from.” My first impulse was, of course, to pay him the money I owed him, but I restrained it and waited to see if he would ask for it. He poured his tale of woe into my sympathizing ear for twenty minutes, and finally turned away and left me without his dues. As he walked away, I called him back and said, “Look here, my friend, do you know you are a fool?”

“Oh, yes, Professor, I found that out long ago. But on what particular point do you find me a fool to-night?”

“Don’t you know that I owe you five dollars?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why didn’t you ask for it?”

“I don’t know,” he said in a dazed sort of way, “I simply couldn’t; I came to you for it; I told you my circumstances hoping you would pay me, but I couldn’t ask you for it.”

And he could not. His case was an extreme one; but there are many in the same position. The simple fact is, he did not have financial sense enough to ask for it. I gave him his money and told him if he needed more to come to me and I would help him further, and I did; but the best thing I did for him was to instruct him in the development of financial sense, and I got  him far enough along, to enable him to ask for money when due him; but it would be a hopeless task to undertake to make a financier out of such a man. I also examined his oldest boy, and finding that he had inherited his father’s weakness, I gave him and his mother special instruction for the development of financial ability. Two years later, when I visited the same city, I found him supporting his mother and the younger children from his own wages; and his mother brought her entire family to me for written examinations, and I found them well dressed and well fed; and the mother, with an expression of gratitude I shall never forget, informed me that the splendid financial energies of her son, were entirely due to the faithful performance of my instructions. And as she paid me a handsome fee for my services, and I looked upon her happy family, I felt that the gratuitous examination I had given the boy two years before had borne good fruit.

I could multiply instances to prove the existence and working of each of the various special senses of the individual, represented by the phrenological organs, but I assume that the foregoing are sufficient for the purposes of the present lecture.

It is a common mistake of parents to suppose that if a child has a special endowment of sense in any particular direction, it will manifest such strong inclinations in that direction, that these natural inclinations  may be taken for a guide. Sometimes this is true, but oftener it is not the case, so that the natural inclinations of children are by no means safe guides in the choice of a profession, occupation or trade.

When the circus is in town, the natural inclination of every healthy boy is to be a clown or bareback rider, but it does not follow, that if his inclinations are gratified, it is the best course he can pursue. Some of the most magnificent talents, on the other hand, lie dormant until they are carefully called out and trained by the teacher. There are also periods in the life of every boy and girl when new faculties seem to be awakened, and for a time engage the entire attention; and the watchful parent is apt to mistake one of these periodical outbreaks for the manifestation of a talent deciding the destiny of a child. At one period of a boy’s existence he may manifest great fondness for tools and working in machinery; at another, for music; at another, for trading and merchandizing; while comparatively dormant may lie a masterly ability to grapple with the problems of philosophy and science, which in later years marks him as a genius in literature and scientific investigation.

Sometimes a talent manifests itself at an early age, but the parent does not realize its scope and value, or the full character of the child, and he is placed in an occupation far inferior to his actual merit, or the measure of his capacity.

  A father brought his son to me exclaiming with pride, “This boy is a genius, and I am going to make a first-class carpenter of him, unless you can suggest something better, and prove that he has talent for it. He can take a pen-knife and a board, and carve out anything he may desire to make. He certainly has a genius for mechanical work.”

“Yes,” I said, “this boy will make a first-class carpenter; he will succeed well in carving boards and in doing delicate joining, and as a foreman, or as the owner of a planing mill, he will make a good living; his wages may run up to five or ten dollars per day; but such an occupation is beneath his capacity. This boy has, in addition to his mechanical genius, a wonderful endowment of intellectual ability and scientific proclivities; and if you will send him to a first-class medical college and make a surgeon of him, his mechanical skill will have a higher field to display itself and he will carve men at fifty dollars per day.”

The old gentleman hadn’t thought of that, but he wisely acted on my suggestion, and his boy is to-day one of the brightest young surgeons in the state in which he lives, and he carves men, instead of boards, at higher prices.

The ability to command a high grade of compensation for labor of any kind depends largely upon a man’s own confidence in his skill, and his ability to perform work rapidly, as well as skillfully. A factory  which can turn out double the quantity of work of its competitor, will secure the best contracts and give the greatest satisfaction. In the same way, a man who can do double the quantity of work done by a fellow-workman will, if his labor be equally skillful, be regarded as worth three or four times as much as his slower competitor. The pride and dignity attached to superior accomplishments doubles the value of the service. The best man in any department of work commands his own price, and people are willing to give him the full margin of profits. The best surgeon is always demanded when human life is at stake; the best lawyer when property of great value is involved in litigation. And when a man knows that he is the best in his department of work, whatever it may be, he has that confidence in himself which will enable him to exact good wages. As long as a man realizes that he is inferior, his work is at a discount and he himself deficient in dignity and self-confidence.

An old darkey, who was famed for his skill as a butcher, was employed by a stranger to slaughter a hog. The service being well performed, Pompey demanded five dollars in payment.

“Five dollars!” gasped the astonished owner of the pork, “for slaughtering one hog! outrageous!”

“No, sah,” said Pompey with dignity, “I’se only charged you one dollar for de work, sah. De balance am for de know how.”

  It is absolutely essential, in order that one may rise to eminence in a profession, trade or occupation, that he should select one where he can use his best faculties; because he will be rated as a successful man, a man of mediocre talents, or a complete failure, according to the amount of sense displayed by the faculties he uses in his business. If a young man has an excellent talent for music, an ordinary degree of ability in mathematics, and none in regard to art, he will be a success in the orchestra; he may make a precarious living as a book-keeper; but if he starts a photograph gallery, he will disgust his customers and prove a dismal failure. In the first, he will be respected and admired; in the second, tolerated; in the third, despised.

In my professional experience I have met thousands of men who were admired and respected as master-minds, because they were using strong faculties, the best they had, and the world gave them more than their dues, because they were ranked in mentality at the grade of their strongest faculties, and their weaknesses were overlooked, hidden in fact by the brightness of the few talents they did possess and use to advantage.

I have examined thousands of men of equal ability who were regarded as very ordinary, because they were in walks of life which called forth only the inferior elements of their characters. I have examined  thousands of others of equal ability, and many of magnificent endowment, who were limping, staggering and blindly groping down the dismal path of despair, because they were depending on their weakest elements, and the world despised and judged them unjustly, because they were ranked in mentality at the grade of their weakest faculties—their virtues and talents hidden by the fact that they were never used. It has been my happy privilege to place them, for the first time, in possession of the true estimate of their elements of strength and weakness, and to direct them with the absolute certainty of success into paths of usefulness, prosperity and enjoyment.

I might confer a favor upon you, by giving you a letter of introduction to some rich and powerful friend of mine who could aid you in your business, but I confer a greater favor upon you when I give you my written delineation of character. It is an introduction to yourself. For the first time you are made acquainted with your own character. There it stands in bold relief; your talents and how to make the most of them; your faults and how to correct them; your adaptation