ogies, and talk about all sorts of things but the business of the moment.

There are some men you never can bring to the point. They will wander all around it, over it and under it, always evading and avoiding, but never quite touching the marrow. Their minds work by indirection; their mental processes are not exact. They are like children in the play called "Poison," —they try to avoid touching the designated object. It seems unaccountable that people will take so much trouble apparently to avoid coming to the point.

When boys and young men ask my opinion about their ability to succeed in business, I try to find out whether they have this power of directness, of coming to the point clearly, squarely, and forcibly without indirection, without parleying, without useless words. If they lack this quality, apparently there is little chance of their succeeding in a large way, for this is characteristic of men of affairs who achieve great things. The indirect man is always working to disadvantage. He labors hard, but never gets anywhere. It is the direct man who strikes sledge-hammer blows, and the man who can penetrate the very marrow of a subject at every stroke, and get the meat out of a proposition, who does things. They know what they want, and are never on the fence. They do not waste their time shilly-shallying, seeking advice, balancing opinions, or splitting hairs. They decide upon a course of

action, and then pursue it without hesitation or wavering.

How often we see some one rise in a meeting or public gathering and inform the audience that he "has just a word to say," and then spend half an hour saying it! Brevity is one of the rarest attainments. It indicates a close, compact, and balanced mind. Very few people ever learn how to concentrate their minds and condense their thoughts. They ramble along aimlessly in their talk, using, perhaps, ten times the words that are necessary to express their thought had they the power to condense their ideas into the fewest possible words.

Directness is a cardinal virtue of the man who succeeds. He does not go over a thing, or around it, but to it and through it. If he calls to see you on business, he does not spend fifteen minutes in introducing his subject; he strikes directly to the heart of it; he does not waste your time on preliminaries or non-essentials, but proceeds to attend to the business in hand, and, as soon as he finishes, —stops.

The quality of directness is characteristic of all men of great executive ability, because they value time too much to squander it in useless and meaningless conversation; it is an indispensable quality of the leader or manager of all large enterprises.

Many a man has gone down to failure because he lacked ability to arrive quickly and effectively at a conclusion. While he was deliberating and

balancing and "beating about the bush," the opportunity to save himself passed and the crisis ruined him.

Indirectness has ruined many a rising lawyer. The justices of the Supreme Court of the United States say that it is one of the most difficult things with which they have to contend. Young lawyers, too much impressed with the importance of a supreme court appearance, give long introductions, spin out oratory, explain self-evident points, and send forth copias verborum until they weary the court and hurt their own cases. It is not oratorical display, not verbiage, not well-rounded periods, but direct, clean-cut English, that judges want—facts, clearly, briefly, and decisively stated.

It does not matter how much ability, education, influence, or cleverness you may have, if you lack the art of coming to the point quickly and decisively, of focusing yourself immediately, you can never be very successful.

We know many young men who were graduated with honors from college, and who have always impressed us as youths of great possibilities and great promise; yet, somehow, they never focus, they never get anywhere; they are always about to do something; they are usually just going to come to the point, but fall a little short of it. Men who are well bred, well educated, and superbly equipped, have often disappointed their relatives, their friends, and themselves, simply because they

lacked directness or the faculty of focusing their ability upon one point until they burned a hole

in it.

Indirect people flash all their powder in the pan, and never fire the charge or start the ball.

In selecting a boy from a score of applicants, a shrewd employer will take the one who gets to his subject directly, states it concisely, with the fewest words, outlines his position briefly and stands or falls by it, and does not bore him by telling of the great things he has accomplished or of what he can do.

Conciseness and clearness of expression are valuable acquisitions and always create a good impression.

When a person is long on words and short on ideas, we know that he either lacks brain power or he has become a victim of prolixity; he has formed the vicious habit of chattering without thinking.

This habit of loose-jointed, slovenly speech is largely due to the fact that children are not taught to think, but to jabber. Thought should precede the language, but the majority of people begin to talk before they think, and then they stammer and repeat themselves and jumble their conversation

all up.

Direct, wise, clean-cut language indicates a clear brain, a brain that has been trained to think. Slipshod, loose-jointed, slovenly language indicates a lack of logical training.

At General Grant's war councils, his generals would spend a great deal of time in discussing situations, the probabilities of the success or failure of the proposed move upon the enemy; but General Grant would walk back and forth in his tent with his arms behind him, smoking his cigar, seldom opening his mouth or making a suggestion. He would simply smoke and think, and when the other generals were talking he would often draw a paper from his pocket and give it to them with these words: "Gentlemen, to-morrow morning you will proceed at daylight to carry out these orders."

An excess of any virtue may transform it into a vice. We all know that this condensing idea can be carried too far, to such a ridiculous extent that its very purpose is defeated. We can condense our schooling, our preparation for life and spoil our careers; we can scimp on our work, hurry up on a task that requires the utmost carefulness and precision, and ruin it; we can injure our health by bolting our food, by not exercising properly, by not taking a vacation, because we must save time. In a thousand and one ways we can condense and hurry to our great injury, as we Americans in too many instances do, but the examples of condensation and brevity in business cited illustrate the tendency of this efficiency age. This is an age of brevity and directness. Except in European diplomacy people go directly to the point, without circumlocution or ambiguity. All roundaboutness, all