right lying; for 'the second vice is lying, the first is running in debt,' as Poor Richard says; and again, 'Lying rides upon debt's back.'

"This doctrine, my friends, is reason and wisdom; but industry, 5 and frugality, and prudence may all be blasted without the blessing of Heaven. Therefore ask that blessing humbly, and be not uncharitable to those that at present seem to want it, but comfort and help them."

The old gentleman ended his harangue. The people heard 10 it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary, just as if it had been a common sermon; for the auction opened, and they began to buy extravagantly. I found the good man had thoroughly studied my almanac and digested all I had dropped on these topics during the course of twenty-five years. 15 The frequent mention he made of me must have tired any one else; but my vanity was wonderfully delighted with it, though I was conscious that not a tenth part of the wisdom was my own which he ascribed to me, but rather the gleanings that I had made of the sense of all ages and nations.

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However, I resolved to be the better for the echo of it; and, although I had at first determined to buy the stuff for a new coat, I went away resolved to wear my old one a little longer. Reader, if thou wilt do the same, thy profit will be as great as mine.-I am, as ever, thine to serve thee.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was born in Boston, the youngest son of a large family. At the age of ten he began to work for his father, a tallow-chardler and soap-boiler. Two years later he was apprenticed to his brother James, who was a printer. Although Benjamin Franklin received very little education in school, he was constantly reading and studying. When he was seventeen years old he went to Philadelphia, and soon was established as a successful printer and proprietor of a newspaper.

In 1736 he entered political life and from that time held many positions of public trust. He went as envoy to England and to France, in which latter place he was exceedingly popular. It is said that Benjamin Franklin was the only man whose name was attached to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Treaty of Peace with England,

and the Treaty of Alliance with France. Probably no native of this country ever ranked higher in the estimation of European thinkers and statesmen. In 1732 Franklin began the publication of Poor Richard's Almanac under the name, Richard Saunders. This proved extremely popular, and in 1758, when the last edition was issued, Franklin gathered together, in what is known as "Father Abraham's Speech," the best of the maxims which had appeared in the Almanac. These maxims had been thought out by Franklin during his own years of thrift and hard work.

Discussion. 1. What question led to this speech by Father Abraham? 2. What taxes besides government taxes does he say that we pay? 3. How much does idleness tax people? 4. What is better than wishing for better times? 5. Against what practices do these maxims warn us? 6. What habits or virtues do they advise us to acquire? 7. Can you explain how Benjamin Franklin helped his country by publishing these maxims? 8. With which of the maxims are you familiar? What ones will you learn today? Which one will help you most? 9. Find in the Glossary the meaning of: abatement; sloth; diligence; mickle; knickknack; ape; superfluities; veracity; harangue; doctrine; ascribed; gleanings.

A MESSAGE TO GARCIA

ELBERT HUBBARD

In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain and the United States it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia 5 was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba-no one knew where. No mail or telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his coöperation, and quickly.

What to do!

Someone said to the President, "There's a fellow by the name 10 of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can."

Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by the name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, 15 disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia-are things I have no

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special desire to tell in detail now. The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college in the land! It is not book learning young men need, nor instruction about this or that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae that will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing "Carry a message to Garcia."

General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias.

No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise wherein many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man—the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it.

Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds unless, by hook or crook or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant. You, reader, 20 put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your officesix clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request: "Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum of Correggio."

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Will the clerk quietly say, "Yes, sir," and go to the task?

On your life he will not! He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions:

Who was he?

Which encyclopedia?

Where is the encyclopedia?

Was I hired for that?

Don't you mean Bismarck?

What's the matter with Charlie doing it?

Is he dead?

Is there any hurry?

Shall I bring you the book and let you look it up for yourself?
What do you want to know for?

And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered

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the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to find Garcia-and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average, I will not.

Now if you are wise you will not bother to explain to your "assistant" that Correggio is indexed under the C's, not in the K's, but you will smile sweetly and say, "Never mind," and go look it up yourself.

The dread of getting "the bounce" Saturday night holds many a worker to his place. Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate-and do not think it necessary to.

Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?

"You see that bookkeeper," said a foreman to me in a large factory.

"Yes; what about him?"

"Well, he's a fine accountant, but if I'd send him uptown on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the 20 other hand, might stop on the way, and when he got to Main Street would forget what he had been sent for."

Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia? We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the "downtrodden denizens of the sweatshop" and the 25 "homeless wanderer searching for honest employment," and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power.

Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne'er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long, patient striving with "help" that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away "help" that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on.

No matter how good times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finerbut out and forever out the incompetent and unworthy go. It is

the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best-those who can carry a message to Garcia.

I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to anyone else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress him. He cannot give orders; and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, "Take it yourself!" 10 Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows ⚫him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand of discontent.

Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying, let us 15 drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slipshod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry 20 and homeless.

Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a work of sympathy for the man who succeeds-the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and having suc25 ceeded, finds there's nothing in it-nothing but bare board and clothes. I have carried a dinner pail and worked for day's wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers so are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous.

My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, with35 out asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but delivering it, never gets "laid off." Civilization is one long,