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THE WAY TO BECOME GREAT.

Half-witted people, only, will suppose I mean grate, for the most obtuse nincompoop must know that anybody can become a grate man by going into the stove business; but to develop yourself into a real bona-fide great man, like GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN or DANIEL PRATT, requires much study and a persistent effort.  I have carefully thought out this subject, and have reduced my reflections and observations to a series of rules, which, for the benefit of humanity, I propose to make public.

It must he premised that there are many varieties of great men.  Daddy LAMBERT was a great man, so was the living skeleton, yet even a casual observer could perceive the difference in their greatness.  The greatness of the fleshy world is one thing; the greatness of the no-fleshy world is another.  Also, strange as it may seem, a man may be great and yet not be great.  HOOD was a great General, so was NAP 3, but they tell me that Nashville and Saarbrucken are terrible commentaries on greatness.  Also a man may be great and not know it.  They say that, until he had made his grand success at Fort Fisher, you never could persuade BUTLER that he was a great General.  TUPPER, I am informed, would never believe that he was the most remarkable poet ever produced by England.  Also a man may be great and be perfectly aware of it.  Acquaintances of GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN, Gen. O’NEILL, and Count JOANNES, assert that no one knows, better than these gentlemen, that they are great men.  Also a man may die calmly in the consciousness that he is a distinguished individual, and yet, years afterwards, some magazine writer may cast historic doubts upon his greatness.

Of course there are several classes of great people.  There is the little great man, (for example, NAP. 3,) the big great man, (BISMARCK,) the great little man, (NAP. 1,) and the great big man, (the Onondaga giant.) But the patient observer must perceive that general rules will cover all these cases.

It is to be hoped that no one, who shall become great by means of my rules, will turn upon me and revile me, when he finds himself interviewed incessantly, persecuted by unearthings of his early sins, by persistent beggars, by slanders of the envious, by libels of the press, and by the other concomitants of greatness.  You must take the sour with the sweet.  Even the sweetest orange may have an unpleasant rind.

RULES BY WHICH EVERY MAN CAN BECOME GREAT.

1.  Always be sure to get what belongs to you, and make most vigorous grabs for everything that belongs to everybody else.

2.  Take everything which is offered to you, if it be on a par with what you deem the standard of your worth.

This rule requires the exercise of much wisdom in its application.  If, for example, you look upon the Custom House as the office which is adapted to you, don’t, under any circumstances, take the appraiser’s position.  But you must never let the rule work the other way.