It is with some feeling of regret that we announce our retirement from the business on the beginning of the new year.  Our stock and premises will then be transferred to Messrs. Franklin and Warren, whom we cheerfully present to your notice, and feel it our duty to recommend them for a continuance of that liberal confidence and patronage which you have bestowed on us during the past twenty years.

Both these young gentlemen have been clerks of ours for
several years past, and are in every way efficient and capable
to continue the business.

We are
Respectfully,
JOHNSON & FOX

* * * * *

[Illustration:  ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS IN BUSINESS.]

ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS IN BUSINESS

In order to succeed in business life, it is necessary to cultivate and develop certain qualities and traits of character.  These are a portion of the capital of the successful man, and a more essential portion than money or goods.

HONESTY.

“Sharp practice” may bring a temporary gain but in the long run of life that man will be far ahead who deals squarely and honestly at all times.  A thoroughly honest clerk will command a higher salary than one of equivocal habits, while the merchant who has a reputation for honesty and truthfulness in regard to the quality and value of his goods, will on this account he favored with a considerable custom.  The business man whose “word is as good as his bond” can in any emergency, control large amounts of capital, the use of which brings him a rich return, while the man who sells his neighbor’s good opinion for a temporary gain, will find that he has discounted his future success, but taking an advantage at the cost of ten tines its value.

INDUSTRY.

No other quality can take the place of this, and no talents of mind, however excellent, will bring success without labor; persistent systematic labor.  The young man who expects to find some royal road to success with little or no effort, or who imagines that his mental abilities will compensate for a lack of application, cheats and ruins himself.  Horace Greeley probably never said a grander thing than this:  “The saddest hour in any man’s career is that wherein he, for the first time, fancies there is an easier was of gaining a dollar than by squarely earning it.” and Horace Greeley was himself an example of success through industry.

[Image:  COUNSEL AND ADVICE.]

It is not genius, but the great mass of average people, who work, that make the successes in life.  Some toil with the brain, and others toil with the hand, but all must toil.  Industry applies to hours in business and out of business.  It means not only to perform all required work promptly, but to occupy spare moments usefully, not to idle evenings, and to rise early in the morning.