Success

ol, and without it we cannot hope to go far into the fulfillment of our own desires. The one who hopes to find something to do, who has an urging aspiration and then fails to do this thing with their might, is not fit to possess the thing for which they are longing. It is possible to go through life idle and drifting, thinking the world owes us a living and we do get some things because the Universal life always floats an abundance of supply on its bosom, and anyone who wants to do so can eat the crumbs which fall from the idlers' table, but if we hope to come out into any definite form, use or value, we can only do it by bending nobly to life's oars. In life's channel there are rocks everywhere and it is our own hand that must clear the channel and our own genius that must steer us past them. Some of the most wonderful successes have been born from the genius of concentration and they never surrendered one iota of their might until they accomplished their ends. The story is told of the late John W. Gates and his perfect manifestation of this success principle. He went to San Antonio, Texas and saw the great possibilities in Texas; he came to the state some years ago as the agent of a barbed wire company, and emphasized his belief to an old citizen now a resident of San Antonio. This old citizen was complaining that he could only make a living here. "Make a living!" said Gates. "Any man can get rich here in ten years." "Well," said the old citizen, "I've been here more than ten years and I have not got rich." "Perhaps not," remarked Gates, "wealth does not hunt one up and spring from some unseen angle. One has to keep constantly on the trail, and since there are so many trails leading in the right direction in Texas, if you will keep an eye on me I'll show you how the trick is turned." Some years later when Gates became heavily interested in the lumber business in the eastern part of the state, someone said to him: "You cannot make the lumber business go here, since there is no means of shipping it." "Never mind," remarked Gates, "I'll make a place to ship it from and then I'll show you that there is enough lumber in Texas to weatherboard the universe." Sometime after this he met the old man to whom he had talked about getting rich when he first came to Texas. 46 "I hear you are making it go," said the old man, "and that you are really getting rich, as you said you would." "Making it go," remarked the man who saw possibilities. "Damn it! things