"Mental Efficiency And Other Hints to Men and Women"

The man who spends half a crown on Stubbs's " Early Plantagenets " instead of going into the Gaiety pit to see " The Spring Chicken," will probably be the sort of man who can suck goodness out of Stubbs's " Early Plantagenets " years before he bestirs himself to read it.

VII

SUCCESS

CANDID REMARKS

THERE are times when the whole free and enlightened Press of the United Kingdom seems to become strangely interested in the subject of "success," of getting on in life. We are passing through such a period now.

It would be difficult to name the prominent journalists who have not lately written, in some form or another, about success. Most singular phenomenon of all, Dr. Emil Reich has left Plato, duchesses, and Claridge's Hotel, in order to instruct the million readers of a morning paper in the principles of success! What the million readers thought of the Doctor's stirring and strenuous sentences I will not imagine; but I know what I thought, as a plain man.

After taking due cognizance of his airy play with the " constants " and " variables " of success, after watching him treat " energetic " (his wonderful new name for the " science " of success) as though because he had made it end in " ics " it resembled mathematics, I thought that the sublime and venerable art of mystification could no further go.

If my fellow-pilgrim through this vale of woe, the average young man who arrives at Waterloo at 9.40 every morning with a cigarette in his mouth and a second-class season over his heart and vague aspirations in his soul, was half as mystified as I was, he has probably ere this decided that the science of success has all the disadvantages of algebra without any of the advantages of cricket, and that he may as well leave it alone lest evil should befall him.

On the off-chance that he has come as yet to no decision about the science of success, I am determined to deal with the subject in a disturbingly candid manner.

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