The line between boys and young men is invisible. Those who pass it cannot tell where it lies. But the time comes when they no longer admit to themselves or others that they are boys. They bear about the pleasant consciousness that they are nearer the heart of a business life than they were a while before. They may be apprentices, collectors, entry clerks, shipping clerks, bookkeepers, salesmen behind the counter, or on the road, but they are no longer boys and they are not yet partners. A numerous class, they will become largely the business men of the next generation. Even now they represent immense personal, domestic and public interests. Who can think of them without emotion! It does not require a broad sweep of observation and recollection to bring into view from the two extremes young men who have utterly failed and others who have won honorable success; those who have sealed their own doom and dragged others down with them to an abyss of shame and misery, and those who have become princes in the earth. It is worth asking at the outset what meaning we ought to attach to the words “success” and “failure” in business. We do not account him successful who gains large wealth, leaving it to his family and even to public institutions of great usefulness, but who does it at the cost of personal integrity, character and reputation. We do not need examples of men who have grown rich by doubtful methods of business, by perversion of office and trust funds, and who have already sunk or are now sinking into depths of infamy and woe opened by their own hands. Nor is he successful who gains wealth honestly, and hoards it—against all the claims of humanity and the revealed will of God—until his riches are corrupted, his gold and silver cankered, the rust of them even now, before the last day, eating his flesh as it were fire. Men utterly fail, though possessed of millions, who make shipwreck of character in the sight of their Maker and their fellow-men. Many fail for lack of qualities and habits, and, it may be, opportunities, that condition success. But _they do not_ fail who use all diligence, and their best wisdom and opportunity, and yet become poor without the loss of a good conscience toward God and man. And they certainly succeed who amass wealth or a competency while maintaining their integrity in relation to God and their honor among men. It may be well to state here some of the well-ascertained facts in regard to the percentage of success and failure in business, using the words in their most limited meaning.