It is very difficult to leave this topic of success without saying something about the success of great men; indeed there is no reason why I should. I wonder if it has ever occurred to the reader to ask why there are so few great men and why so few men succeed in lifting themselves above the average level. Perhaps it hasn't. But if he did ask why we cannot all raise ourselves above the average, the answer would be, very simply, that we all can if we try.

This is a thing that we realise at once when we study the careers of great men. But to study them properly we must not turn to the dull pages of the college histories. There only a very limited and partial account of the great is found. To get the real facts we must open the advertising pages of the illustrated magazines, and we can see at a glance that they tell us vital things never touched upon by the standard histories.

For example, it is very doubtful whether Bancroft ever knew that George Washington was in the habit of taking four deep breaths just before eating. If he did he never mentions it. Nor does he make any reference to the fact that Benjamin Franklin once said that no perfect breakfast food had as yet been found (that, of course was in his day: it has been found since, as we shall see).

In the same way Lord Macaulay, a man otherwise well informed, does not seem to know that Oliver Cromwell once said "The Secret of making money lies in Scientific Investment." Nor was Shakespeare aware that the cloak or mantle which Julius Caesar wore on the day he overcame the Nervii and which he wore when he was stabbed by his assassins was undoubtedly made by the famous Knit-Knot process, now so widely known.

One asks in vain, what kind of suspenders did Henry of Navarre use? What was it that Charlemagne used to say about carrying a camera with you during a vacation in the Adirondacks? What sort of exercise did Queen Elizabeth take for ten minutes every morning? In what attitude was Lord Bacon standing when he said "Mr. Business Man, why not use a fountain pen?"

But in recent times all these fascinating things are being solved for us by the painstaking researches of the advertising experts. We are getting to know things about our great men that we never knew before,--intimate, personal things that we never knew before.

And of all the historical characters whose careers are being thus illuminated there is one who stands out conspicuously above all others, --The Emperor Napoleon. This great man enjoys, in the success movement, an eminence over all others. It is the aim of everybody to be a Napoleon in his own particular line of activity and a great many are succeeding. You can see their pictures any day.

There are at least thirty-seven Napoleons now doing business. There is a "Napoleon of Billiards" and... a "Napoleon of Water Polo," and a "Napoleon of the Rubber Shoe Industry"; and there is also a man who is the "Napoleon of Pants Designers," and another who is the "Napoleon o{ the Ladies Shirtwaist Business"; there is a dog who is the Napoleon of Airedale Terriers, and there is a cow who is the Napoleon of Holstein milk-givers.

In short it is becoming a very important thing to learn how to be a Napoleon. You have only to turn over the back pages of any of our greatest journals, the serious pages where they teach people how to live and how to sell things,--to see little pictures of Napoleon inserted everywhere. Sometimes there is just his head under his hat: sometimes a full length picture to show his hands clasped behind his back. And in each case there is some little motto that Napoleon said or some statement about his habits. From across the years and over the wastes of the South Atlantic Napoleon is still teaching us how to live and how to sell things.

From these statements thus printed I have pieced together a composite picture of Napoleon in which is shown those little personal things that made him what he was.

Anybody who wants to be a Napoleon has only to imitate these things. I admit that they are a little complicated. But even Napoleon couldn't have learned them all at once. He must have picked them bit by bit.

In the first place the great Emperor was an early riser. The hour of three in the morning saw him in the saddle or at his desk. "Early rising," he once said when taking a well known breakfast food, "not only peptonizes the stomach but with the aid of a simple remedy obtainable at all drug stores restores tone and vigor to the lost digestion."

Napoleon also sat up late. He never sought his couch till three in the morning. "The later the hour," he once said, in referring to a new patent oil lamp, "the better the brain."

It was the practice of Napoleon to chew his food twenty minutes before swallowing it Eating a sirloin steak took him all day. Napoleon was in the habit of eating standing up. He also ate lying down. He could even sit and eat.

While talking the great Emperor habitually held his mouth firmly shut.

Napoleon always wore wool next to his skin. He once said in an interview which he seem: to have given to a well known firm of woollen manufacturers in Paterson, New Jersey, "There is nothing like wool."

In the same way he always said, "There is nothing like a delicious cup of 0zo when exhausted from the pulpit and the platform."

Napoleon was passionately fond of walking: also he never walked. Napoleon drank, but always with the strictest avidity.

Napoleon made little use of tobacco except in the form of snuff, or cigars or cut plug.

During his exile at St. Helena Napoleon is reported to have said,

"If I had taken a course in Personal Leadership, I should not have landed here."