Chapter 2

Section I. Commencing Business.--Avoid debt. Do not begin too early. Facts stated. Why young men do not take warning. Students of Medicine and Divinity. Examples for imitation. 100-108

Section II. Importance of Integrity.--Thieves and robbers respect it. What it is. Many kinds of dishonesty. 1. Concealing the market price. 2. Misrepresenting it. 3. Selling unsound or defective goods, and calling them sound and perfect. Quack medicines. 4. Concealing defects. 5. Lowering the value of things we wish to buy. 6. Use of false weights and measures. Other kinds of dishonesty. 108-115

Section III. Method.--Memorandum book; its uses. Rules for doing much business in little time. 116-117

Section IV. Application to Business.--Every person ought to have one principal object of pursuit, and steadily pursue it. Perseverance of a shopkeeper. All _useful_ employments respectable. Character of a _drone_. 117-120

Section V. Proper Time and Season of doing Business.--When to deal with the gloomy; the intemperate; those unhappy in domestic life; men involved in public concerns. 120-122

Section VI. Buying upon Trust.--Live within our income. _Calculate._ Buy nothing but what you need. Estimates and examples to show the folly of credit. Not intended as lessons of stinginess. 122-127

Section VII. We should endeavor to do our business ourselves. Four reasons. Trusting dependants. We can do many little things without hindrance. 127-130

Section VIII. Over Trading.--A species of _fraud_. Arises from a desire to get rich rapidly. Wickedness of monopolies. 130-131

Section IX. Making contracts beforehand. Always make bargains beforehand. Three reasons. If possible, reduce every thing to writing. 131-132

Section X. How to know with whom to deal.--Two rules. How to detect a knave. All men by nature, avaricious. Avoid those who boast of _good bargains_. Avoid sanguine promisers. 133-135

Section XI. How to take Men as they are.--How to regard a miser; a passionate man; a slow man; the covetous; those ruled by their wives; the boasting; the mild tempered; the bully. Six sorts of people from whom you are not to expect much aid or sympathy in life: the sordid, the lazy, the busy, the rich, those miserable from poverty, and the silly. 136-140

Section XII. Of desiring the good opinion of others.--Those not far from ruin who _don't care_.--The other extreme to be avoided. 140-141

Section XIII. Intermeddling with the affairs of others.--Matchmakers. Taking sides in quarrels. Ishmaelites. 142-143

Section XIV. On keeping Secrets.--Who may safely be trusted. Anecdotes. 143-145

Section XV. Fear of Poverty.--Little real poverty in this country. Shame of being thought poor leads to worse evils than poverty itself. Fear of poverty often a cause of suicide. 145-150

Section XVI. Speculation.--The habit early formed. It is a species of gaming. Its sources. 150-152

Section XVII. Lawsuits.--Avoid the law. Litigiousness, a disease. Consider what is gained by it. Examples of loss. Subdue the passions which lead to it. Lawsuits unnecessary. 152-156

Section XVIII. Hard dealing.--Its unchristian nature. _Two prices._ Habits of the Mohammedans. 156-157