I can't think what it is about your modern world, but something certainly makes me more serious than I should have dreamed of being in the days of long ago. Maybe it is your air of ardent business activity, your restless and faster moving civilization, or the world's spreading financial gloom. At least it is making me a demmed earnest critic, full of gravity and heavy words.

I stood a while ago at the exit of one of the great London railway stations, watching the faces of those who passed. And do you know, in the space of an hour, I saw--apart from those who were in conversation with friends--three smiling faces! All the rest, and there must have been many thousands, were either drawn or tense or worried or frowning. And oh! my friends, so many of them looked inconspicuous. Now I cannot bear a man to lack some sort of an air, some soupçon of dare-devilry, some outward manifestation of courage and success.

And this makes me ask you whether you individually are content to be one of the weak, ineffectual, inconspicuous little people who look with envy on those others at whose careless feet Fortune has thrown her manifold gifts? Are you content to be numbered among those who murmur dejectedly: 'Some people get all the luck! I've always been an unlucky sort'? Do you confine your share of success and happiness and efficieny to wondering how others achieve it, because if so it is entirely your own fault.

Get rid of that fallacy that 'luck' accounts for the victories won by the more forceful of your competitors. Do not deceive your better self with the false argument that all the chances go to other folk.

Get out in the cold, unflattering light of truth, m'dears; a failure stripped of comforting illusions may not cut a very pretty figure there. But the very act of shedding the cloak of self-deception will be the first step along the path which will lead you to the sunlit kingdom of success.

There is one essential key to success--sincerity. There are many other minor keys; for the gate which guards success from those that seek it may be compared to one of your new patent safes, the lock of which will only open with the aid of a certain combination of letters. But emphatically, without sincerity, no lasting success can be won in any walk of life.

Very little work that is worth while can be done with your tongue in your cheek, nor can it be done supinely or carelessly. We should not expect, say, a carpenter, an artist, or an instrument-maker to produce fine work while he was busy gossiping with a pal or gazing up at the skies. A consummate artist or craftsman must concentrate every energy on his task, or his work will not be worth looking at.

And the same with the rest of us. Those splendid fellows who constituted the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel did not, believe me, approach with a superior smile the serious tasks which I had the honour to set them, nor did they dally contemptuously with them. Faith! M. Chauvelin would assure you of that. Nor did any of us try to beat a retreat before our task was neatly rounded off. Gadzooks! our heads would have paid the penalty for our supineness, and your success will pay the score if you shirk.

Your splendid modern poet, Rudyard Kipling, said a very true thing when he wrote that 'Half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees.' The spirit of that applies to all good work. You must get down to it, take off your coat, and not be afraid of hurting your hands. You must take a pride in what you do, and put heart and soul into it. The attainment of success is the hardest task ever known.

Keep a smiling face before the world, have a gay laugh always ready to help you over the stony paths of life, and a joke at your command wherewith to hearten those who feel that their burdens are heavier than they can bear. La! my friends--I fear me I'm but a poor example, yet I contrived to get through the task of living without ever pulling a long face, even though there were at times devilish unpleasant duties to perform. When I remember the number of times that those demned unpleasant fellows over in France spoiled the set of my cravat or made me exchange my ruffle for a coal-heaver's sack--why! I declare that I feel ready toead the members of my League down to the nether pits for the mere pleasure of another bout with them!

Courage is the keystone of success, m'dears, and so are persistence, an intense and unflagging capacity for work, and yet more work, the strength of mind to carry on in face of failure and defeat, the gift of learning wisdom from mistakes, and lastly the power of extracting every ounce of romance and idealism out of life. The demmed fellow who said that success was one-tenth inspiration and nine-tenths perspiration was more than a wit--he was a prophet; though I am inclined to hate him for speaking such an unpalatable truth!

It is just as bad to allow reverses to discourage you as it is to allow success to go to your head. Success should never make you forget that even while you are still indulging in a transport or untimely bragging, you might find yourself dislodged from that particular rung of the ladder of fame which you happen to have attained. No game or battle is ever wong till it has been fought for, nor is it won till the opponent is finally crushed.

This, at least, I see in your world of to-day; that it grants the guerdon of success only to those who by concentration, hard work and perseverance deserve to win it. And the surest way to win, m'dears, is to act up to the motto of one of your modern captains of industry: 'Always do even the commonest thing uncommonly well.'