Grand River times. [volume] (Grand Haven, Mich.) 1851-18??, 1852-10-20
THE FOUNDATION OF SUCCESS

Stephen Allen, who was lost by the recent
calamity on the Hudson River, had long been
man of influence and usefulness in the city of
New York. In his pocket book was found a
well-worn slip from newspaper, the general
principles inculcated in which he is regarded as
having embodied in his life to remarkable de-
gree. Ii is as follows:
"Keep good company or none. Never be
idle. If your hands cannot be usefully employ
ed, attend to the cultivation of your mind AL
ways speak the truth Make few PROMISES
Live up to your engagements. Keep your own
secrets, if you have any. When you speak to
a person, look him in the face. Good compa-
ny and good conversation are the very sinews
of virtue Your character is above al! things
else. Your character cannot be essentially in
jured, except by your own acts. If any one
speaks evil of you, let your life be so that none
will believe him. Drink no kind of intoxicatng
liquors. Ever live misfortune excepted) with
in your income. When you retire to bed, think
over what you have been doing during the day.
Make no haste to be rich, if you would prosper.
Small and steady gains give competency with
tranquility of mind. Never play at any kind
of game of chance. Avoid temptation, through
fear you may not withstand it. Earn money
before you spend it. Never ruin into debt, un-
less you see way to get out again. Never
borrow, if you can possibly avoid it. Do not
marry until yon are able to support wife,
Never speak evil of any one. Be just before
you are generous. Keep yourself innocent, if
you would be happy Save when you are
young, to spend when you are old. Read over
the above maxims at least once week."
An exchange copies the foregoing, and adds:
"Could there be counsels which would more
certainly secure the entire worldly success of
him who would follow them? Is there one
man in thousand who, never swerving from
obedience to them from youth upward, need
fail to attain at least competence, accompani-
ed with well-settled respect from those around
him, which brings more enduring and pervading
happiness to its possessor than the most daz-
zng honors which an excited people bestow
with one breath to take away with another!-
The duties here enjoined are but those of man
to man, or of man to himself These counsels
refer only to the daily life of one who seeks
not distinction, but quiet happiness; who
strives not even for wealth for wealths sake,
but so to conduct his business that with mod
est independence he may command that unim-
peached credit which is so much more honora-
bic to its possessor than heaps of gold acquired
by devious or even hazardous means. Homely
however, as they seem in tone, applicable only
to the even course of such as seek no farther
than discharge with clear conscience the
simple duties Of a life without change, it is pre-
cisey such rules of conduct as these which, if
strictly followed, surely raise men to an emf
nence which has the rare addition of stability
"We are somewhat in danger, in our DASH
ing enterprise of disregarding those qualities
which 60 to make men of sterling worth-and
such men save us. They are the stamina of
the community. He who has millions must Of
necessity hold prominent place among his fel-
lows--but prominent position Is not always
one of honor; and for the well-being of com.
munity, better the man who has accumulated
thousands by unAinchng industry, directed by
a purpose of answering integrity, than he who
through series of fortune guesses, has, by the
losses Of others, become the possessor of humid
reds of thousands. The mind of the one ex.
lists in wel.compacted integrty--that of the
other is debauched, unbalanced, loose. The
one is more useful without his money than
the other with his. The one has made that
which he has part Of himself--he CONTROLS it
knowingly, as if it were but further develop
ment of his own powers for good--the other
feels hardly sure even of that which is his only
claim to his adventitions consideration, and
which places him upon an eminence whose
height but dwarfs his real self in the eyes of
others, and unsettles his ownill- balanced BRAIN.
Integrity of mind and purpose is the only sure
ty which any man--above all, any merchant
can have for a successful, happy, useful, and
honorable life. Without it, the most brilliant
talents lead but to gilded discomfort, and the
bo!dest enterprise but to the direst ruin"
Erenchman thinks the English language
is very tough-Dare is look out, he says, which