The fourth is Economy. Your time is worth more to this business than that of all the help put together. And when you spend it doing what a ten-dollar-a-week girl could do just as well, it is sinful extravagance. It wastes not only your time, but hers. Worst of all, it undermines your self-respect and her respect for you. The fifth is Honesty. When you rush away to wait on some customer yourself because that customer has connived with you for some special cut rates, you may not intend it, but you are dishonest. Business must be done at a profit and all those who share in the privileges of buying from this store should share proportionately in paying you your profit. If anyone doesn't pay his share, the others have to make up for it Give everybody a square, equal deal. That will build confidence and increase trade. And then you can leave your salespeople to wait on all customers, giving you more time for real management--generalship. The sixth is Courage. It's easy enough to see obstacles, to make excuses, to procrastinate. When a hard task has to be done, you will find it no help to begin to catalog the difficulties. Just fear not, and do it. Now, you are going to cultivate these virtues, Brainerd, because you see that I am right and because, after all, you are a man of good judgment and reason. "Never mind the contract. When you think my advice has proved its value, send me what you think it is worth." And he walked out, leaving Brainerd purple in the face with a number of varied emotions, chief among which were outraged dignity and warm gratitude. While you and we know many Brainerds, there are men capable of handling large affairs who, through lack of training, lack of opportunity, or a choice of a wrong vocation, are sentenced to sit, year after year, working away in an inefficient, fumbling manner, with a mass of details which they hate and which they are not fitted to take care of properly. Such people are often conscientious; they have a great desire to do their work thoroughly and well, and the fact that they so frequently neglect little details, forget things that they ought to do, overlook necessary precautions, and otherwise fail to perform their duties, is a matter not only of supreme regret and humiliation to them, but of great distress to those who depend upon them. CAREFULNESS AND RECKLESSNESS