if you are a clerk you will soon find that your services are in good demand, while if you are a proprietor you will make the gratifying discovery that you are giving your neighbor down the street a "fine race for his money."

THE HABIT OF INDUSTRY.

The third habit which I desire to mention is industry. This virtue is dinned into one's ears from the cradle to the grave. At the grammar or "district" school our writing books have injunctions regarding its practice; at our graduation commencement orators eloquently beseech us to listen to its teachings; and when we get older we read biographies which point out its supreme importance in the race for success. We hear so much indeed about the value of industry that we are always in danger of getting unutterably weary of the whole subject and throwing it aside in disgust. But we should remember that the really important things in life are and must be always with us; and we should school ourselves against feeling that contempt or that indifference which too often spring from close familiarity. What I shall have to say about industry will not occupy much space. I can sum my message up in these four words: "DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME!" There are few men in the world who know how to use their time to good advantage-very, very few. They waste precious hours and minutes without knowing it, and their familiar remark is, when asked why they do not perform this duty or that, "I haven't time for it; I am too busy." They do have the time, but they don't know how to use it.

Particularly is this true of the druggist. His is a peculiar business. Instead of having, as men of most occupations have, a certain number of prescribed hours-seven, or eight, or nine-during which he is continuously occupied at his calling each day, he fills in the whole span from rising to retiring; and his period of daily leisure, instead of coming altogether in the evening, is scattered throughout the day, with five minutes here and ten minutes there. These bits of leisure lend themselves to profitable employment; they are full of possibilities; but I venture to say that seven out of ten druggists unthinkingly permit them to go to waste.

Now there are numbers of these five and ten minute periods in a day; and every one of them is an OPPORTUNITY! Every one of them is a precious stone that should be husbanded with great care. In the aggregate they mean wealth-wealth of time, wealth of achievement, wealth of possibility. Don't waste them. Don't allow them to flit

by unemployed. Use them-grasp them-seize upon them! It is not for me to suggest what may be done during such intervals. There are always hosts of things to do. The store must be kept neat and in order; the shelf bottles must be kept filled; manufacturing operations must keep pace with demand; vigorous advertising methods must be employed; new schemes must be evolved; the bookkeeping must be kept up to the minute; certain goods must be kept put up in five- and ten-cent packages; the drug journals must be carefully read; books and periodicals must be perused in order that one may be an intelligent man in the community; one must keep up his scientific and professional studies; and he must do the things which make him more competent and more indispensable in his calling. All these things, together with many others that might be mentioned, take time, and they can all be done if the precious minutes of opportunity are seized upon as fast as they appear.

I would advise you earnestly to adopt the rule of doing something every time an instant offers, no matter how short it is, or how slight the opportunity may seem to be. Follow this rule out faithfully and continuously; keep everlastingly at it; and in time you will successfully cultivate the precious habit of industry. You will then find yourself naturally and unconsciously turning at every bit of leisure to some duty; and you will discover that if you do not do this you will feel the natural discomfort which comes from violating a law of your nature. When that period is reached the habit of industry will have been formed, and you will have equipped yourself with an instrument which will be like unto Excalibur, the magic sword with which King Arthur achieved such remarkable things.

THE HABIT OF ORDER.

And now in the fourth and last place I want to speak of a habit which is closely allied to that of industry, and which enables one to make the most of the time afforded him. I refer to the habit of order. In his "Essay on Man," Pope says that

"Order is Heaven's first law; and this confest, Some are, and must be, greater than the rest." And the importance and significance which he gives to this factor seem to me abundantly justified. For order and method, perhaps more than any other single element save genius or transcendent ability, determine how much we shall accomplish in life and what our measure of success shall be. It would be interesting to know how many business failures are due to the absence of this quality. All sorts of

reasons are given in the commercial reports for failures, but I have an idea that if it were possible to get at the real truth, we should find in the great majority of cases that this one fault is the thing which undermines the whole structure.

Let me relate an instance within my own knowledge. Several years ago a friend of mine was established in a retail pharmacy by his father. He had He had received a good general education. He had graduated in pharmacy. He was bright, affable, and popular. Apparently his future was full of promise. The store was well stocked and handsomely furnished, and the young man began his business career under the most auspicious circumstances. But a fatal defect was soon made evident. He was lacking in the quality of order. Everything about the store was before long in a hit-and-miss condition. Instead of there being "a place for everything and everything in its place," there were all places for all things and nothing could be found when it was needed. The want book was not kept in a systematic manner; the stock was not subjected to careful observation; and soon customers had to be told all too frequently that the article which they wanted was "just out." The duty of to-day was always put off until to-morrow; to-morrow in turn brought its own set of duties; and the accumulation was always so great that nothing was ever done. There was no method in the paying of bills; cash discounts were not taken advantage of; invoices were usually remitted for only when repeated demands had been made; and the young man's credit began to dwindle. Prescription dispensing was done wholly without method; and one error nearly brought the business solidly against the wall of ruin. Inventories were never taken; there was no adequate system of bookkeeping; the real condition of the business was accordingly never known; it was not discovered that the expenses were out of all proportion to the profits; the fact escaped attention that the stock had gradually decreased; more and more bills meanwhile accumulated; there was insufficient money to pay them with; and at last one fine morning the whole thing went "up in smoke," and the "old man" had the blessed privilege which fond fathers often enjoy of going down in his jeans for a couple of thousand!

This is no imaginary talė; nor have I overdrawn it in the least. It is a true, not a fanciful picture. And it faithfully represents a condition of things which is all too common. Over and over again a man of education, of ability, a man "clean" and courteous and popular, secures a good trade, works up a nice business, and then suffers the worm of disorder to gnaw

through the roots of the tree and ruin its beauty and its usefulness. I tell you, gentlemen, if you would accomplish things, and if you would retain what you accomplish, you must cultivate the habit of order. You must do things with regularity and system and method. You must arrange the work of the store so far as possible into a definite schedule. You must have one day of the week, say, for manufacturing; another for cleaning and redressing the windows; and another, perhaps, for paying bills. You must have an orderly system in the dispensing of prescriptions. You must follow a regular plan of checking and examining goods when they come in from the jobber or the manufacturer. You must have an adequate method of keeping a close watch of your stock. You must buy systematically and keep your goods in proper condition. The work of to-day you must do to-day, for to-morrow can be depended upon to bring its own troubles. And you must do these things until you get in the habit of doing them. Do them until it becomes natural to do them-until you could not act otherwise without inflicting pain on yourself. And remember that

"Order is Heaven's first law; and this confest,
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest."
THE LAST WORD.

Now I might go on to speak of other habits-of others just as important as these I have mentioned, perhaps more important, indeed. I might consider, for instance, the habit of study, or the habit of carefulness in dispensing. But I don't want to weary you; neither do I want to ask so much that you will throw. the whole thing aside as impracticable. To form habits is admittedly not the easiest thing in the world; and these four will keep you adequately employed for some time. If so be that you choose to set about their formation, and if you attain a fair measure of success with them, you can undertake the cultivation of such others as then seem to you important and desirable. But even if, as pharmacists, you stop with the habits of courtesy, cleanliness, industry and order, you will have increased your capacity for success to an extent which will far more than repay you for the effort. This I cannot assure you of with too much conviction and certainty. And of one more thing I want to assure you: not only will these habits mean greater success for you; they will mean also far greater happiness and content in your business life, in your social life, in your home life. And you will not be long out of college and into the seething sea of the world's activities, before you realize that without happiness and content you might better never have been.

From your grocer borrow one dozen bright, new buckets, all of a single color and kind. Tell him. you will care for them well and will not diminish their selling aspect in the least. Now with wooden boxes from the cellar form a series of steps in the show window, each step sufficiently deep to afford a firm support for a bucket. Let these steps extend entirely across the window at the base and diminish in breadth as they ascend to take the general outline of a pyramid.

Now to give the buckets their exhibition dress: Cause one of them to look very full of copperas, and label the bucket in large letters on a strip of white paper. Make another seem completely filled with insect powder and label as such. Put whiting into a third to deceive the bystander into thinking it wholly full of the same, and label it "whiting." In this way prepare other buckets for the exhibit that will contain tar balls, flake tar-camphor, borax, washing soda, soap bark, etc. Fill still more buckets with water and label them "turpentine," "benzine," "ammonia," etc. If the latter are made to occupy upper positions on the window staging, they may be empty. Line with paper the buckets you fill with the dry agents in order to prevent blemishes.

Now cover the broad steps with black tar-paper, and rest the buckets on them in symmetrical order, one at the very top to crown this unique presentation of housecleaning aids. In the vacant spaces on the

MAKING N. A. R. D. PLANS EFFECTIVE.

To the Editors:

I desire to extend my thanks for your appreciative editorial in the April issue concerning my remarks at the Pennsylvania State Pharmaceutical Association meeting. I am glad to learn that the spirit of my remarks was so well received, and I am satisfied that any broad-minded pharmacist in this district will bear out the statements if appealed to. But, singularly enough, there are a few druggists who, in the midst of all the achievements of our association, still "hang the lip," and complain because more is not accomplished.

There are men, too, who utterly refuse to contribute one penny to the treasury while at the same time acknowledging that they are being greatly benefited by the work of the association. What action to take with such creatures is one of the greatest problems we have before us. As the secretary I have endeavored to try to have our good, active members always demand from each salesman who visits this district a salesman's card. Before issuing this card I lay before the salesman the names of all the fellows who are "beating their way," getting in under the canvas, as it were, and I insist that they shall not be visited, and that no "special offers" shall be given them, thus making them sort of pariahs in the drug community. So far I have not been able to make this treatment as effective as it should be, because of the failure of