different subjects at once. Many a fortune has slipped through a man's
fingers became he was engaged in too many occupations at a time. There
is good sense in the old caution against having too many irons in the
fire at once.

BE SYSTEMATIC

Men should be systematic in their business. A person who does business
by rule, having a time and place for everything, doing his work
promptly, will accomplish twice as much and with half the trouble of him
who does it carelessly and slipshod. By introducing system into all your
transactions, doing one thing at a time, always meeting appointments
with punctuality, you find leisure for pastime and recreation; whereas
the man who only half does one thing, and then turns to something else,
and half does that, will have his business at loose ends, and will never
know when his day's work is done, for it never will be done. Of course,
there is a limit to all these rules. We must try to preserve the happy
medium, for there is such a thing as being too systematic. There are men
and women, for instance, who put away things so carefully that they can
never find them again. It is too much like the "red tape" formality at
Washington, and Mr. Dickens' "Circumlocution Office,"--all theory and
no result.

When the "Astor House" was first started in New York city, it was
undoubtedly the best hotel in the country. The proprietors had learned a
good deal in Europe regarding hotels, and the landlords were proud of
the rigid system which pervaded every department of their great
establishment. When twelve o'clock at night had arrived, and there were
a number of guests around, one of the proprietors would say, "Touch that
bell, John;" and in two minutes sixty servants, with a water-bucket in