THE MAN OF BUSINESS

Of Dispatch

By FRANCIS BACON

[Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans (commonly known as Lord Bacon), was born at London, January 22, 1561, the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth. He was called to the bar at the age of twenty-one, and entered Parliament in 1584. In 1593 his speeches in Parliament against the money grants to provide against the threatened danger to England from the Catholic powers gave offense to the Queen, and though the Queen's favorite, Essex, urged preferment for him, he never attained to any responsible position during her lifetime. In 1597 he published the first edition of his essays, ten in all, and among them some of the most famous. In 1601, when Essex was brought to trial for treason, Bacon appeared against him, and even drew up a pamphlet reprehending him after his execution. Apologists of Bacon assert, however, that in doing this he placed loyalty to his sovereign above that to a friend and benefactor. Under James I. his advancement was steady. Aside from public office, which he sought as a means of income to enable him to pursue his scientific researches, he produced in 1605 "The Advancement of Learning," which forms the groundwork of his "Instauratio Magna or "Great Reconstruction of Science." The second part, or "Novum Organum," was completed in 1620. Meantime he was made lord chancellor in 1618, six months afterward was created Baron Verulam, and, on the twenty-seventh of January, 1621, Viscount St. Albans. On the fifteenth of March he pleaded guilty to a charge of corruption and was degraded from his high offices, sentenced to a fine of £40,000, and committed to the Tower. From this he was released the next day and his fine was remitted, but he spent the remainder of his life in retirement and study. He died on April 9, 1626.]

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FFECTED dispatch is one of the most dangerous things to business that can be. It is like that which the physicians call predigestion, or hasty digestion, which is sure to fill the body full of crudities and secret seeds of diseases. Therefore, measure not dispatch by the times of sitting, but by the advancement of the business. And as in races, it is not the large stride or high lift that makes the speed, so in business,

the keeping close to the matter and not taking of it too much at once procureth dispatch. It is the care of some only to come off speedily for the time, or to contrive some false periods of business, because they may seem men of dispatch. But it is one thing to abbreviate by contracting, another by cutting off; and business so handled at several sittings or meetings, goeth commonly backward and forward in an unsteady manner. I knew a wise man that had it for a byword, when he saw men hasten to a conclusion, "Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner."

On the other side, true dispatch is a rich thing; for time is the measure of business as money is of wares; and business is bought at a dear hand, where there is small dispatch. The Spartans and Spaniards have been noted to be of small dispatch: Mi venga la muerte de Spagna-Let my death come from Spain, for then it will sure to be long in coming.

Give good hearing to those that give the first information in business, and rather direct them in the beginning than interrupt them in the continuance of their speeches; for he that is put out of his own order will go forward and backward, and be more tedious while he waits upon his memory than he could have been if he had gone on in his own course. But sometimes it is seen that the moderator is more troublesome than the actor.

Iterations are commonly loss of time, but there is no such gain of time as to iterate often the state of the question; for it chaseth away many a frivolous speech as it is coming forth. Long and curious speeches are as fit for dispatch as a robe or mantle with a long train is for a race. Prefaces, and passages, and excusations, and other speeches of reference to the person, are great wastes of time, and though they seem to proceed of modesty they are bravery. Yet beware of being too material when there is any impediment or obstruction in men's wills; for preoccupation of mind ever requireth preface of speech, like a fomentation to make the unguent enter.

Above all things, order and distribution and singling out of parts is the life of dispatch, so as the distribution be not too subtle; for he that doth not divide will never enter well into

business, and he that divideth too much will never come out of it clearly. To choose time is to save time, and an unseasonable motion is but beating the air. There be three parts of business: the preparation, the debate or examination, and the perfection. Whereof, if you look for dispatch, let the middle only be the work of many, and the first and last the work of few. The proceeding upon somewhat conceived in writing doth for the most part facilitate dispatch, for though it should be wholly rejected, yet that negative is more pregnant of direction than an indefinite; as ashes are more generative than dust.

LUCK, OR PLUCK?

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Men of Pluck

By WILLIAM MATHEWS

WRITER in "Blackwood's Magazine" relates a striking

incident in the life of Nassau William Senior, professor

of political economy at Oxford University.

When examined for his bachelor's degree he was “plucked.” He failed in divinity, which, as it was then the first subject on which the aspirant was examined, rendered fruitless any amount of general acquisition, and insured immediate rejection. Nowise distrustful of himself, the young man determined to try again, and meanwhile looked out for a private tutor with whom to read. He called upon Richard Whately, afterward archbishop of Dublin, and expressed a wish to be received by him as his pupil. Whately scarcely took the trouble to look his visitor in the face, but coolly answered:

"You were plucked, I believe. I never receive pupils unless I see reason to assume that they mean to aspire at honors." "I mean to aspire at honors."

"You do, do you?" was the rejoinder. "May I ask what class you intend to take?"

"A first class," said Senior coolly.

Whately's brow relaxed. He seemed tickled with the idea that a lad who had been plucked in November should propose to get into the first class in March; and he at once desired the plucky youth to come to be coached. Never were tutor and pupil better matched. Senior read hard-went up into the schools in March-and came out with the highest honors.

HOLDING ON

Who does not admire the pluck which this incident exemplifies? History abounds with illustrations showing that it is this bulldog tenacity that wins life's battles, whether fought in the field, the mart, the senate, or the forum. It was the bold onset made by a few resolute men against troops that had maintained successfully a hard day's combat that turned the scale at last, at Lutzen, in favor of the Swedes and broke the charm of Wallenstein's invincibility.

It was the pluck of Isaac Newton that led him, when he stood at school at the bottom of the lowermost form but one, to thrash the boy above him who had kicked him, and then to determine to vanquish him as a scholar, which he also did, rising to the top of his class. It was this quality that was preeminent in Liebig in his youth-the "booby" of his school, who, when sneeringly asked one day by the master what he proposed to become, since he was so poor a scholar, answered that he would be a chemist-a reply which provoked a laugh of derision from the whole school. Yet he lived to become one of the most eminent chemists of modern Europe.

Who can think without a thrill of admiration of that glover's apprentice in Glasgow, Scotland, who battled with almost incredible earnestness and persistence against the obstacles that confronted him in the acquisition of knowledge? Living with a relative, an old woman who was too poor to afford him a candle or even a bright firelight, he read books in the street by the light of a shop window, and, when the shop was closed, climbed a lamp-post, and, clinging to it with one hand, held his book in the other and thus mastered its contents. Who can wonder that he became one of his country's eminent scholars?

NIL DESPERANDUM

How long and strenuously, against baffling discouragements, did Edison labor to make the phonograph produce an aspirated sound! "From eighteen to twenty hours a day, for