Self Help

As she entered my private office, I motioned her to the big easy-chair back of my desk while I took the little hard-seated chair which, under ordinary circumstances, I would have used as a means of discouraging her from taking up too much of my time.

For three-quarters of an hour I listened to one of the most brilliant and charming conversations I have ever heard, and my visitor was doing all of the conversing. From the very start she had assumed the initiative and taken the lead, and, up to the end of that first three quarters of an hour, she found no inclination, on my part, to challenge her right to it. I repeat, lest you did not get the full import of it, that I was a willing listener!

Now comes the part of the story which would make me blush with embarrassment, if it were not for the fact that you and I are separated by the pages of this book; but I must summon the courage with which to tell you the facts because the entire incident would lose its significance if I failed to do this.

As I have stated, my visitor entranced me with brilliant and captivating conversation for three-quarters of an hour. Now, what do you suppose she was talking about all that time? No! You are wrong. She was not trying to sell me a book, nor did she once use the personal pronoun "I."

However, she was not only trying, but actually selling me something, and that something was myself.

IF you have tried and met with defeat; if you have planned and watched your plans as they were crushed before your eyes; just remember that the greatest men in all history were the products of courage, and courage, you know, is born in the cradle of adversity.

She had no sooner been seated in that big cushioned chair than she unrolled a package which I had mistaken for a book that she had come to sell me, and sure enough, there was a book in the package - in fact, several of them; for she had a complete year's file of the 7 magazine of which I was then editor (Hill's Golden Rule). She turned the pages of those magazines and read places that she had marked here and there, assuring me, in the meanwhile, that she had always believed the philosophy back of that which she was reading.