A determination to succeed once formed, and a congenial career once chosen and entered upon, there commences a process of character-building by the formation of life habits. These solidify into personal characteristics, the varying assortment of which in the individual constitutes what we call his personality, wherein one man differs from another. Character, it has been wisely said, is the resultant of choices. It appears again and again in the reminiscences of those who have succeeded, that from time to time they have deliberately chosen a course of action which by force of habit has become a personal characteristic, and has earned them national, if not world-wide, reputation. The name of “Honest” John Wanamaker stands for a reputation having a commercial value of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The acorn from which grew this mighty oak was a young man’s choice of honesty as the foundation of his career. Books and essays by the score and hundred have been written by theorists upon the principles of success in life. Worthy as are many of the writers, their lives often illustrate the adage of the poet, “It were easier to tell twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to follow mine own teachings.” Boldly contrasted with such writings are the flesh and blood maxims herein contained, stamped with the mint marks of great personalities, towering mountainous among their fellows, each coined from the life habits which have hardened into enduring character, and have left their impress upon the history of our times. In a drawing-room or public assemblage he would indeed be unambitious and mean-spirited, who would not choose the company and conversation of the greatest and the best. Carlyle says, “Great men taken up in any way are profitable company.” What privilege could promise equal pleasure and profit with a series of visits at the homes of the most notable personages our land contains, to consult with each on the great questions of success or failure, of what constitutes ideal success, and of how it may be attained? Such is the privilege contemplated by this volume and freely offered to all who choose to avail themselves of it. Compared with the inspiration, the examples and the wise counsel contained within its covers, the cost of such a volume sinks into insignificance. Benjamin Franklin said that the reading of one good book made him what he was. Henry Clay testified, “to the fact that in the midst of her early poverty my mother provided her home with a few choice books, do I owe my success in life.” Senator Dolliver, in the present volume, regards a chance-found book as the turning point of his career, and like testimony is all but universal. Let the young and the guardians of youth weigh well the thought that there are sins of omission, as well as of commission, and that it may be hardly a less criminal negligence to refuse fit books for the growing mind than food for the growing body.