Was there ever a time or a place in history where mere money was so powerless and brains so mighty as the present day in the American Republic? Was there ever a time or place where the individual man was at once so powerful to protect his own rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and so powerless to snatch away those rights from others? The conscientious rich man does well to try to whip his fellow-millionaires into line with the procession. But he need not torment his declining years with horrid visions of coming anarchy if these rich men do not stop groveling and grasping and begin to entertain worthy ambitions. Let the rich do their part; but let every man, rich or poor, high or humble, remember that his first duty is to see that he is doing his own part. One loses patience with the constant precedence given the idea that riches alone mean success. Why is it that the only men who are eagerly interviewed and importuned to write articles on “the secret of success” are multi-millionaires? Are there no successful men but multi-millionaires? There are not more than five thousand of them in the country. Carlyle once described England as “inhabited by thirty millions, mostly fools.” And our own country, if none has succeeded in it but the multi-millionaires, may be described as inhabited by “eighty millions, mostly failures.” Success is a glittering word, capable of many meanings. A man is not necessarily a failure because he has not made money--a million dollars or a hundred. Some very successful men have never tried to make money. They preferred to make _something_, and if they achieved their desires they succeeded--from their own viewpoint, at least. Agassiz would not accept five thousand dollars a night to lecture. “I have no time to make money,” he said. Scientific inquiry and discovery were the objects of his life, and he succeeded in his pursuit of them. Wellington, after conquering Mysore, was proffered a gift of five hundred thousand dollars by the corrupt East Indian Company. He refused to touch it. Piling up “big money” was not his idea of success, either. When John Hancock, one of the signers of our great Declaration, was sitting in the Continental Congress a letter was read from Washington suggesting the destruction of Boston by bombardment. Hancock was one of Boston’s largest property owners, but he instantly said: “All my property is in Boston; but if the expulsion of the British from it require that Boston be burnt to ashes, issue the order immediately.” There was another man who didn’t believe that “success” was only another name for millions.