The Secrets of Success: 8 Self-Help Classics That Have Changed the Lives of Millions

THE

SECRETS

OF

SUCCESS

THE

SECRETS

OF

SUCCESS

8 SELF-HELP CLASSICS

That Have Changed The Lives of Millions

Published 2019 by Gildan Media LLC

aka G&D Media

www.GandDmedia.com

THE SECRETS OF SUCCESS. Copyright © 2019 by G&D Media. All rights reserved.

A Message to Garcia was originally published in 1914; Acres of Diamonds was originally published in 1915; As a Man Thinketh was originally published in 1903; Character Building Thought Power was originally published in 1900; The Greatest Thing in the World was originally published in 1891 and 1898 by Fleming H. Revell Company; The Magic Story was originally published in 1900; The Majesty of Calmness was originally published in 1900; The Science of Getting Rich was originally published in 1910.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. No liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained within. Although every precaution has been taken, the author and publisher assume no liability for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

Front cover design by David Rheinhardt of Pyrographx

Interior design by Meghan Day Healey of Story Horse, LLC

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request

ISBN: 978-1-7225-0060-3

eISBN: 978-1-7225-2131-8

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Contents

Introduction

A Message to Garcia

ELBERT HUBBARD

Acres of Diamonds

RUSSELL H. CONWELL

As a Man Thinketh

JAMES ALLEN

Character-Building Thought Power

RALPH WALDO TRINE

The Greatest Thing in the World

HENRY DRUMMOND

The Magic Story

FREDERICK VAN RENSSELAER DEY

The Majesty of Calmness

WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN

The Science of Getting Rich

WALLACE D. WATTLES

Introduction

In Defense of Self-Help

By Mitch Horowitz

When G&D Media asked me to write the introduction to this collection, Secrets of Success, I was favorably inclined—because the term self-help appears prominently, and rightly, in its subtitle.

People too often run away from the term self-help. I believe they should embrace it.

Self-help has developed a bit of a dowdy reputation today. To some, it seems naïve or soft-headed. To others, it seems gauche or down-market. I was once corresponding with a successful self-help writer who seemed embarrassed by the term. I don’t see myself as a self-help writer, he wrote. I think that most self-help is a sham. The same writer later sent me a mass-mailing for a Magic Income Trick.

I know another writer of popular psychology who rejects the label self-help because, she says, I don’t provide answers.

Why do good writers flee from a label that obviously belongs to them? Probably because they fear it’s undignified. I feel the opposite.

To me, self-help is a noble term. Although I write as both a historian and a spiritual seeker, I wear the label proudly. Some of my books have been about finding a definite aim in life or experimenting with the metaphysical properties of the mind or cultivating personal habits that can produce success. If I’m not a self-help writer—what am I?

The term self-help came into popular use in 1859, when British political reformer Samuel Smiles published his landmark work Self-Help, which celebrated good character, self-education, and accountability. Tame-sounding ideas today, but I often note that the profundity of simple ideas is revealed only in their application. The individual’s struggle—or failure—to apply basic principles can place him before vast questions. Smiles’ book became one of the most influential of its time.

Smiles did not coin the phrase self-help. The term originated in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 lecture, Man the Reformer, a work that Smiles admired. Can we not learn the lesson of self-help? Emerson asked. Society is full of infirm people, who incessantly summon others to serve them.

Emerson was not referring to the destitute. But rather to those who clamor for life’s luxuries even while producing little themselves. By contrast, Emerson asked: Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve them one’s self, so as to have somewhat left to give, instead of being always prompt to grab?

Authentic self-help demands personal excellence; the drive to overcome addiction or crippling habits; and the wish to make life a little better for those who venture near you.

Some of the greatest exponents of self-help include therapist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl; Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson; and Emerson himself, who intended his essays as practical philosophy. While the term didn’t exist in his day, Benjamin Franklin can be considered a self-help writer for his popular tracts on good conduct. (Early to bed and early to rise …)

As I’ve written elsewhere, many contemporary studies in cognitive psychology proffer exaggerated or oversold conclusions, the very things that some of the same researchers accuse New Age writers of.* This trend has weakened the current crop of self-help books. But as far as the classics are concerned—by which I mean books that have attained posterity such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Think and Grow Rich—their practical effectiveness rests chiefly on the passion of the individual seeker.

As an Arab proverb goes: The way bread tastes depends on how hungry you are. The depth of your hunger for self-change is likely to match the benefit you experience from any legitimate self-help program.

* In Defense of the ‘Woo-Peddlers, by Mitch Horowitz, Medium.com, Nov. 30, 2015

A

MESSAGE

TO

GARCIA

ELBERT HUBBARD

Apologia

Horse Sense

If you work for a man, in Heaven’s name work for him. If he pays wages that supply you your bread and butter, work for him, speak well of him, think well of him, and stand by him, and stand by the institution he represents. I think if I worked for a man, I would work for him.

I would not work for him a part of his time, but all of his time. I would give an undivided service or none. If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must vilify, condemn, and eternally disparage, why, resign your position, and when you are outside, damn to your heart’s content. But, I pray you, so long as you are a part of an institution, do not condemn it. Not that you will injure the institution—not that—but when you disparage the concern of which you are a part, you disparage yourself. And don’t forget—I forgot won’t do in business.

This literary trifle, A Message to Garcia, was written one evening after supper, in a single hour. It was on the Twenty-second of February, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-nine, Washington’s Birthday, and we were just going to press with the March Philistine. The thing leaped hot from my heart, written after a trying day, when I had been endeavoring to train some rather delinquent villagers to abjure the comatose state and get radio-active.

The immediate suggestion, though, came from a little argument over the teacups, when my boy Bert suggested that Rowan was the real hero of the Cuban War. Rowan had gone alone and done the thing—carried the message to Garcia.

It came to me like a flash! Yes, the boy is right, the hero is the man who does his work—who carries the message to Garcia. I got up from the table, and wrote A Message to Garcia. I thought so little of it that we ran it in the Magazine without a heading. The edition went out, and soon orders began to come for extra copies of the March Philistine, a dozen, fifty, a hundred; and when the American News Company ordered a thousand, I asked one of my helpers which article it was that had stirred up the cosmic dust.

The next day a telegram came from George H. Daniels, of the New York Central Railroad, thus: Give price on one hundred thousand Rowan article in pamphlet form—Empire State Express advertisement on back—also how soon can ship.

I replied giving price, and stated we could supply the pamphlets in two years. Our facilities were small and a hundred thousand booklets looked like an awful undertaking.

The result was that I gave Mr. Daniels permission to reprint the article in his own way. He issued it in booklet form in editions of half a million. Two or three of these half-million lots were sent out by Mr. Daniels, and in addition the article was reprinted in over two hundred magazines and newspapers. It has been translated into all written languages.

At the time Mr. Daniels was distributing the Message to Garcia, Prince Hilakoff, Director of Russian Railways, was in this country. He was the guest of the New York Central, and made a tour of the country under the personal direction of Mr. Daniels. The Prince saw the little book and was interested in it, more because Mr. Daniels was putting it out in such big numbers, probably, than otherwise.

In any event, when he got home he had the matter translated into Russian, and a copy of the booklet given to every railroad employee in Russia.

Other countries then took it up, and from Russia it passed into Germany, France, Spain, Turkey, Hindustan and China. During the war between Russia and Japan, every Russian soldier who went to the front was given a copy of the Message to Garcia.

The Japanese, finding the booklets in possession of the Russian prisoners, concluded that it must be a good thing, and accordingly translated it into Japanese.

And on an order of the Mikado, a copy was given to every man in the employ of the Japanese Government, soldier or civilian. Over forty million copies of A Message to Garcia have been printed.

This is said to be a larger circulation than any other literary venture has ever attained during the lifetime of the author, in all history—thanks to a series of lucky accidents!

—E.H.

A Message to Garcia

As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to them that send him: for he refresheth the soul of his masters.

—PROVERBS XXV:13

In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion.

When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents.

Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba—no one knew where. No mail or telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his co-operation, and quickly. What to do!

Some one said to the President, There is a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can.

Rowan was sent for and was given a letter to be delivered to Garcia.

How the fellow by the name of Rowan took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia—are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.

The point that I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, Where is he at? By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land.

It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing—Carry a message to Garcia.

General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias.

No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man—the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it.

Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook or threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant. You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office—six clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request: Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio.

Will the clerk quietly say, Yes, sir, and go do the task?

On your life he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions:

Who was he?

Which encyclopedia?

Where is the encyclopedia?

Was I hired for that?

Don’t you mean Bismarck?

What’s the matter with Charlie doing it?

Is he dead?

Is there any hurry?

Shall I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself?

What do you want to know for?

I wasn’t hired for that anyway!

And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to find Garcia—and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average I will not.

Now, if you are wise, you will not bother to explain to your assistant that Correggio is indexed under the C’s, not in the K’s, but you will smile very sweetly and say, Never mind, and go look it up yourself.

And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift—these are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting the bounce Saturday night holds many a worker to his place.

Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate—and do not think it necessary to.

Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?

You see that bookkeeper, said a foreman to me in a large factory.

Yes; what about him?

Well, he’s a fine accountant, but if I’d send him up-town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street would forget what he had been sent for.

Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?

We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the downtrodden denizens of the sweat-shop and the homeless wanderer searching for honest employment, and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power.

Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long, patient striving with help that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is continually sending away help that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on.

No matter how good times are, this sorting continues: only if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer—but out and forever out the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best—those who can carry a message to Garcia.

I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress, him. He can not give orders; and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, Take it yourself!

Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled Number Nine boot.

Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slipshod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless.

Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds—the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there’s nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes. I have carried a dinner-pail and worked for day’s wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous.

My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the boss is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets laid off, nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long, anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted. His kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village—in every office, shop, store and factory.

The world cries out for such: he is needed, and needed badly—the man who can carry

A MESSAGE TO GARCIA.

* * *

To act in absolute freedom and at the same time know that responsibility is the price of freedom is salvation.

Life In Abundance

The supreme prayer of my heart is not to be learned or good, but to be Radiant.

I desire to radiate health, cheerfulness, sincerity, calm courage and good-will.

I wish to be simple, honest, natural, frank, clean in mind and clean in body, unaffected—ready to say, I do not know, if so it be, to meet all men on an absolute equality—to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unafraid and unabashed.

I wish others to live their lives, too, up to their highest, fullest and best. To that end I pray that I may never meddle, dictate, interfere, give advice that is not wanted, nor assist when my services are not needed. If I can help people I’ll do it by giving them a chance to help themselves; and if I can uplift or inspire, let it be by example, inference and suggestion, rather than by injunction and dictation. That is to say, I desire to be Radiant—to Radiate Life.

ACRES

OF

DIAMONDS

RUSSELL H. CONWELL

An Appreciation

Though Russell H. Conwell’s Acres of Diamonds have been spread all over the United States, time and care have made them more valuable, and now that they have been reset in black and white by their discoverer, they are to be laid in the hands of a multitude for their enrichment.

In the same case with these gems there is a fascinating story of the Master Jeweler’s life-work which splendidly illustrates the ultimate unit of power by showing what one man can do in one day and what one life is worth to the world.

As his neighbor and intimate friend in Philadelphia for thirty years, I am free to say that Russell H. Conwell’s tall, manly figure stands out in the state of Pennsylvania as its first citizen and The Big Brother of its seven millions of people.

From the beginning of his career he has been a credible witness in the Court of Public Works to the truth of the strong language of the New Testament Parable where it says, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, ‘Remove hence to yonder place,’ AND IT SHALL REMOVE AND NOTHING SHALL BE IMPOSSIBLE UNTO YOU.

As a student, schoolmaster, lawyer, preacher, organizer, thinker and writer, lecturer, educator, diplomat, and leader of men, he has made his mark on his city and state and the times in which he has lived. A man dies, but his good work lives.

His ideas, ideals, and enthusiasms have inspired tens of thousands of lives. A book full of the energetics of a master workman is just what every young man cares for.

Friends.—This lecture has been delivered under these circumstances: I visit a town or city, and try to arrive there early enough to see the postmaster, the barber, the keeper of the hotel, the principal of the schools, and the ministers of some of the churches, and then go into some of the factories and stores, and talk with the people, and get into sympathy with the local conditions of that town or city and see what has been their history, what opportunities they had, and what they had failed to do—and every town fails to do something—and then go to the lecture and talk to those people about the subjects which applied to their locality. Acres of Diamonds—the idea—has continuously been precisely the same. The idea is that in this country of ours every man has the opportunity to make more of himself than he does in his own environment, with his own skill, with his own energy, and with his own friends.

—Russell H. Conwell.

Acres Of Diamonds

When going down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers many years ago with a party of English travelers I found myself under the direction of an old Arab guide whom we hired up at Bagdad, and I have often thought how that guide resembled our barbers in certain mental characteristics. He thought that it was not only his duty to guide us down those rivers, and do what he was paid for doing, but also to entertain us with stories curious and weird, ancient and modern, strange and familiar. Many of them I have forgotten, and I am glad I have, but there is one I shall never forget.

The old guide was leading my camel by its halter along the banks of those ancient rivers, and he told me story after story until I grew weary of his story-telling and ceased to listen. I have never been irritated with that guide when he lost his temper as I ceased listening. But I remember that he took off his Turkish cap and swung it in a circle to get my attention. I could see it through the corner of my eye, but I determined not to look straight at him for fear he would tell another story. But although I am not a woman, I did finally look, and as soon as I did he went right into another story.

Said he, I will tell you a story now which I reserve for my particular friends. When he emphasized the words particular friends, I listened, and I have ever been glad I did. I really feel devoutly thankful, that there are 1,674 young men who have been carried through college by this lecture who are also glad that I did listen. The old guide told me that there once lived not far from the River Indus an ancient Persian by the name of Ali Hafed. He said that Ali Hafed owned a very large farm, that he had orchards, grain-fields, and gardens; that he had money at interest, and was a wealthy and contented man. He was contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy because he was contented. One day there visited that old Persian farmer one of those ancient Buddhist priests, one of the wise men of the East. He sat down by the fire and told the old farmer how this world of ours was made. He said that this world was once a mere bank of fog, and that the Almighty thrust His finger into this bank of fog, and began slowly to move His finger around, increasing the speed until at last He whirled this bank of fog into a solid ball of fire. Then it went rolling through the universe, burning its way through other banks of fog, and condensed the moisture without, until it fell in floods of rain upon its hot surface, and cooled the outward crust. Then the internal fires bursting outward through the crust threw up the mountains and hills, the valleys, the plains and prairies of this wonderful world of ours. If this internal molten mass came bursting out and cooled very quickly it became granite; less quickly copper, less quickly silver, less quickly gold, and, after gold, diamonds were made.

Said the old priest, A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight. Now that is literally scientifically true, that a diamond is an actual deposit of carbon from the sun. The old priest told Ali Hafed that if he had one diamond the size of his thumb he could purchase the county, and if he had a mine of diamonds he could place his children upon thrones through the influence of their great wealth.

Ali Hafed heard all about diamonds, how much they were worth, and went to his bed that night a poor man. He had not lost anything, but he was poor because he was discontented, and discontented because he feared he was poor. He said, I want a mine of diamonds, and he lay awake all night.

Early in the morning he sought out the priest. I know by experience that a priest is very cross when awakened early in the morning, and when he shook that old priest out of his dreams, Ali Hafed said to him:

Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?

Diamonds! What do you want with diamonds? Why, I wish to be immensely rich. Well, then, go along and find them. That is all you have to do; go and find them, and then you have them. But I don’t know where to go. Well, if you will find a river that runs through white sands, between high mountains, in those white sands you will always find diamonds. I don’t believe there is any such river. Oh yes, there are plenty of them. All you have to do is to go and find them, and then you have them. Said Ali Hafed, I will go.

So he sold his farm, collected his money, left his family in charge of a neighbor, and away he went in search of diamonds. He began his search, very properly to my mind, at the Mountains of the Moon. Afterward he came around into Palestine, then wandered on into Europe, and at last when his money was all spent and he was in rags, wretchedness, and poverty, he stood on the shore of that bay at Barcelona, in Spain, when a great tidal wave came rolling in between the pillars of Hercules, and the poor, afflicted, suffering, dying man could not resist the awful temptation to cast himself into that incoming tide, and he sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise in this life again.

When that old guide had told me that awfully sad story he stopped the camel I was riding on and went back to fix the baggage that was coming off another camel, and I had an opportunity to muse over his story while he was gone. I remember saying to myself, Why did he reserve that story for his ‘particular friends’? There seemed to be no beginning, no middle, no end, nothing to it. That was the first story I had ever heard told in my life, and would be the first one I ever read, in which the hero was killed in the first chapter. I had but one chapter of that story, and the hero was dead.

When the guide came back and took up the halter of my camel, he went right ahead with the story, into the second chapter, just as though there had been no break. The man who purchased Ali Hafed’s farm one day led his camel into the garden to drink, and as that camel put its nose into the shallow water of that garden brook, Ali Hafed’s successor noticed a curious flash of light from the white sands of the stream. He pulled out a black stone having an eye of light reflecting all the hues of the rainbow. He took the pebble into the house and put it on the mantel which covers the central fires, and forgot all about it.

A few days later this same old priest came in to visit Ali Hafed’s successor, and the moment he opened that drawing-room door he saw that flash of light on the mantel, and he rushed up to it, and shouted: Here is a diamond! Has Ali Hafed returned? Oh no, Ali Hafed has not returned, and that is not a diamond. That is nothing but a stone we found right out here in our own garden. But, said the priest, I tell you I know a diamond when I see it. I know positively that is a diamond.

Then together they rushed out into that old garden and stirred up the white sands with their fingers, and lo! there came up other more beautiful and valuable gems than the first. Thus, said the guide to me, and, friends, it is historically true, was discovered the diamond-mine of Golconda, the most magnificent diamond-mine in all the history of mankind, excelling the Kimberly itself. The Kohinoor, and the Orloff of the crown jewels of England and Russia, the largest on earth, came from that mine.

When that old Arab guide told me the second chapter of his story, he then took off his Turkish cap and swung it around in the air again to get my attention to the moral. Those Arab guides have morals to their stories, although they are not always moral. As he swung his hat, he said to me, Had Ali Hafed remained at home and dug in his own cellar, or underneath his own wheat-fields, or in his own garden, instead of wretchedness, starvation, and death by suicide in a strange land, he would have had ‘acres of diamonds.’ For every acre of that old farm, yes, every shovelful, afterward revealed gems which since have decorated the crowns of monarchs.

When he had added the moral to his story I saw why he reserved it for his particular friends. But I did not tell him I could see it. It was that mean old Arab’s way of going around a thing like a lawyer, to say indirectly what he did not dare say directly, that in his private opinion there was a certain young man then traveling down the Tigris River that might better be at home in America. I did not tell him I could see that, but I told him his story reminded me of one, and I told it to him quick, and I think I will tell it to you.

I told him of a man out in California in 1847, who owned a ranch. He heard they had discovered gold in southern California, and so with a passion for gold he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter, and away he went, never to come back. Colonel