your customers count for more than anything else. The weather of the
face, the temperature of the hand, the color of the voice, will win
customers where other means fail. Make your patrons feel that you are
their friend. Inquire about members of their family. Be exceedingly
polite. Recommend your goods. Mention anything of an especially
attractive or meritorious nature you may have. Join the church, the
regiment, the fire company, and the secret society. Become “all things
to all men, if by any means you can sell to some.” Be everywhere in your
place of business. Oversee the smallest details. Trust as little as
possible to your clerks. The diamond of success is the master’s eye.
Remember there is no fate. There are opportunity, purpose, grit, push,
pluck, but no fate. If you fail, do not lay the blame upon
circumstances, but upon yourself. Enthusiasm moves stones. You must
carry your business in your brain. “A bank never gets to be very
successful,” says a noted financier, “until it gets a president who
takes it to bed with him.” There was an angel in Michael Angelo’s muddy
stone, and there is a fortune in your humdrum store. Hard work and close
thought are the hands that carve it out.