GENIUS OF ONE SORT.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3081, 12 May 1881, Page 4

GENIUS OF ONE SORT.

Successful business people (says M. K. D. in the Ledger) are born, not taught. Their genius is as individual as that of a painter or a sculptor, a poet or a musicion. Give this kind of man five pounds to start with, and you will find him prosperous and comfortable in an incredibly short of time, and that without having been dishonest or a miser. That money must bo made by meanness or dishonesty is only a self-com-fortiog fallacy which people who have not the power of taking the tide which leads on to fortune at its turn, like to take to their hearts. When you have been cheated, it is ten to one that it was by some unlucky person who would probably have been more honest had he been richer. Oh, yes, it is actual genius—this power of making a shilling double itself, whon in the hands of most men it would diminish like the " jolly sixpence" of the old drinking song. How many people have been "set up in business" by their friends and failed ; while one poor young woman rose penniless from her pillow one morning, took the last of her flour and sugar and made a batch of little sweet cakes before the children, who were to be her customers, were ready for school, and so laid foundation for one of the largest confectionery manufactories in tho world. And a poor little fellow, who had not the use of his limbs, beginning with a few papers, gradually built up a great publishinghouse. I do not tell these anecdotes because I believe that everybody can make money who tries to do so. Economy and hard work will not do it, although they will do much. It is the power of seizing upon chances as they come; of calculating results; of refraining from dangerous speculations and entering into advantageous ones ; it is in being neither over bold nor cowardly. In fact, it is something nobody can learn, any more than he could learn to compose Beethoven's music, or paint Correggio's pictures, or write Shakspeare's plays. Some good men have the power, and zo hare some bad men, some refined persons, some coarse persons. And assuredly those who have it should rejoice ; and lot those who have it not refrain from sneering at it. I never do.