Milligan tells me that you are quick to learn, and that you can do a powerful lot of work when you've a mind to; but he adds that it's mighty seldom your mind takes that particular turn. Your attention may be on the letters you are addressing, or you may be in a comatose condition mentally; he never quite knows until the returns come from the dead-letter office. A man can't have his head pumped out like a vacuum pan, or stuffed full of odds and ends like a bologna sausage, and do his work right. It doesn't make any difference how mean and trifling the thing he's doing may seem, that's the big thing and the only thing for him just then. Business is like oil--it won't mix with anything but business. You can resolve everything in the world, even a great fortune, into atoms. And the fundamental principles which govern the handling of postage stamps and of millions are exactly the same. They are the common law of business, and the whole practice of commerce is founded on them. They are so simple that a fool can't learn them; so hard that a lazy man won't. Boys are constantly writing me for advice about how to succeed, and when I send them my receipt they say that I am dealing out commonplace generalities. Of course I am, but that's what the receipt calls for, and if a boy will take these commonplace generalities and knead them into his job, the mixture'll be cake. [Illustration: "_Jim Donnelly of the Donnelly Provision Company came into my office with a fool grin on his fat face._"] Once a fellow's got the primary business virtues cemented into his character, he's safe to build on. But when a clerk crawls into the office in the morning like a sick setter pup, and leaps from his stool at night with the spring of a tiger, I'm a little afraid that if I sent him off to take charge of a branch house he wouldn't always be around when customers were. He's the sort of a chap who would hold back the sun an hour every morning and have it gain two every afternoon if the Lord would give him the same discretionary powers that He gave Joshua. And I have noticed that he's the fellow who invariably takes a timekeeper as an insult. He's pretty numerous in business offices; in fact, if the glance of the human eye could affect a clockface in the same way that a man's country cousins affect their city welcome, I should have to buy a new timepiece for the office every morning.