Let me say a word or two more on this business of success. Is it not, after all, the test of true and faithful work? Must it not be the touchstone of the humble and magnanimous, as well as of the self-asserting and ambitious? Undoubtedly; but here again we have to note that what passes with society for success, and is so labeled by public opinion, may well be, as often as not actually is, a bad kind of failure. Public opinion in our day has, for instance, been jubilant over the success of those who have started in life penniless and have made large fortunes. Indeed, this particular class of self-made men is the one which we have been of late invited to honor. Before doing so, however, we shall have to ask with some care, and bearing in mind Emerson’s warnings, by what method the fortune has been made. The rapid accumulation of national wealth in England can scarcely be called a success by any one who studies the methods by which it has been made, and its effects on the national character. It may be otherwise with this or that millionaire, but each case must be judged on its own merits. XXXIX. I remember hearing, years ago, of an old merchant who, on his death-bed, divided the results of long years of labor, some few hundreds in all, amongst his sons. “It is little enough, my boys,” were almost his last words, “but there isn’t a dirty shilling in the whole of it.” He had been a successful man too, though not in the “self-made” sense. For his ideal had been, not to make money, but to keep clean hands. And he had been faithful to it. XL. In reading the stories of many persons whom the English nation is invited to honor, I am generally struck with the predominance of the personal element. The key-note seems generally some resolve taken in early youth connected with their own temporal advancement. This one will be Lord Mayor; this other Prime Minister; a third determines to own a fine estate near the place of his birth, a fourth to become head of the business in which he started as an errand-boy. They did indeed achieve their ends, were faithful to the idea they had set before themselves as boys; but I doubt if we can put them anywhere but in the lower school of idealists. For the predominant motive being self-assertion, their idealism seems never to have got past the personal stage, which at best is but a poor business as compared with the true thing. XLI. Christ is the great idealist. “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” is the ideal he sets before us—the only one which is permanent and all-sufficing. His own spirit communing with ours is the call which comes to every human being. XLII. Blessed is the man who has the gift of making friends; for it is one of God’s best gifts. It involves many things, but above all, the power of going out of one’s self, and seeing and appreciating whatever is noble and living in another man.