I know one of these who won a fortune, and lost it; won another, and again lost; and who, finally, with judgments and executions showering upon him, set his face to a new land and resolved again to conquer fortune or die.  He conquered—­of course he conquered—­and is now worth many millions.  But if you look into his kindly but deadly blue eye, and consider the tragic and premature whiteness of his hair, and take in the whole resistless and compelling personality of the man, you will see why he succeeded.

We are all familiar with the stirring history of a certain great American master of millions who is now about sixty-five years of age, and has amassed his wealth since he was fifty.  He had failed, and failed often, before that time—­failed once humiliatingly and irretrievably, so the ordinary man would say.  So the ordinary man did say, and say hard and often.

The details of his early catastrophes are not worth while here.  The point is that they did not affect him except to make him stronger.  They were the Thor-like blows with which Fate forged the unconquerableness of this man.  For unconquerable he has become.

He has carried through daring plans; he has brought great financial institutions that opposed him to their knees; from the throne of his audacity he has dictated terms to boards of trade, and made the princes of the houses of commercial royalty his servants.

But if you look at his brow of power, at the merciless and yet delicate and sensitive lips, you will become conscious of why he succeeded—­why he must eventually have succeeded anywhere.  But such a man is no example for you unless you are such a man yourself—­and in that case, you need no examples of any kind.  You are your own example.

I read with keen interest, the other day, a feature article in one of our great daily newspapers, giving incidents in the careers of fifteen American millionaires who made their fortunes after they were fifty.  But all these had the luck of the never-say-die men.  They were all of the class that Emerson describes as having an excess of arterial circulation.

Every failure to them was simply an access of information.  They regarded each loss as another piece of instruction in the game.  Fortune always gives the winnings to such as these at last.  Fortune loves a daring player; and while she may rebuff him for a while, it is only to gild the refined gold of his ultimate achievings.

Another thing.  Go you to church.  Use clean linen.  Wear good and well-fitting clothing.  Take care of your shoes.  Look after all the details of your personal grooming.  In short, observe all the methods which human experience has devised to keep men from degenerating.  There is an unalterable connection between the physical and mental and moral.

The old saying that “cleanliness is next to godliness” has beneath it all the philosophy of civilization.