Let us take another case—that of Rothschild, the third son of the Frankfort banker, who came to England with £2,000, which he soon turned into £60.000. “My success,” he said to Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, “all turned on one maxim: I said, I can do what another man can. Another advantage I had, I was an off-hand man. I made a bargain at once. When I was settled in London, the East India Company had £800,000 worth of gold to sell. I went to the sale and bought it all. I knew the Duke of Wellington must have it. I had bought a great many of his bills at a discount. The government sent for me, and said they must have it. When they had got it, they did not know how to get it to Portugal. I undertook all that, and I sent it through France; and that was the best business I ever did.” Another rule of his was never to have anything to do with unlucky men. “I have seen,” said he, “many clever men—very clever men—who had not shoes to their feet. I never act with them. Their advice sounds very well, but fate is against them; they cannot get on themselves; and if they cannot do good to themselves, how can they do good to me?” His advice to Sir Thomas’s son was sound: “Stick to your business, young man; stick to your brewery, and you may be the great brewer of London. Be a brewer and a banker, and a merchant and a manufacturer, and you will soon be in the _Gazette_.” How true this is, any one who has the slightest acquaintance with City life can at once understand. The advice should be printed in gold in every counting-house in London. If it were, and were acted on as well, we should hear of fewer commercial failures. Let me give another anecdote of the Rothschilds. It is related of Baron Nathan de Meyer, that on one occasion he gave a lady the following pithy piece of advice. Seated at the dinner-table, she informed him she had an only son, whom she was anxious to see placed well in business, and begged him to give her a hint on the subject. For a long time the baron hesitated; and at length, when urged by the lady, half good-naturedly and half worried, he turned round and said—“_Well_, _madam_, _I will tell you_. _Selling lucifer-matches is a very good business if you have plenty of it_.”