Page:The Richest Man In Babylon (1930).pdf/29

 . If I set for myself a task, be it ever so trifling, I shall see it through. How else shall I have confidence in myself to do important things? Should I say to myself, for a hundred days as I walk across the bridge into the city, I will pick from the road a pebble and cast it into the stream, I would do it. If on the seventh day I passed by without remembering, I would not say to myself, tomorrow I will cast two pebbles which will do as well. Instead, I would retrace my steps and cast the pebble. Nor on the twentieth day would I say to myself, ‘Arkad, this is useless. What does it avail you to cast a pebble every day? Throw in a handful and be done with it.’ No, I would not say that nor do it. When I set a task for myself, I complete it. Therefore, am I careful not to start difficult and impractical tasks, because I love leisure.”

And then another friend spoke up and said, “If what you tell us is true, and it does seem as you have said, reasonable, then being so simple, if all men did it there would not be enough wealth to go around.”

“Wealth grows wherever men exert energy,” Arkad replied. “Does a rich man build him a new palace, is the gold he pays out gone? No, the brickmaker has part of it and the laborer has part of it, and the artist has part of it. And everyone who labors upon the house has part of it. Yet when the palace is completed, is it not worth all it cost? And is the ground upon which it stands not worth more because it is there? And is the ground that adjoins it not worth more because it is there? Wealth grows in magic ways. No man can prophecy the limit of it. Have not the Phoenicians built great cities on barren coasts with the wealth that comes from their ships of commerce on the seas?”

“What then do yon advise us to do that we also may become rich?” asked still another of his friends. “The