Next to marriage, partnership is the most important association—Mental partnerships—Be careful whom you choose as your mental partners—Get into partnership with the best thoughts—Dissolve partnership with the other kind—"I Can, I Will; I Do, I Dare."

Next to marriage, a partnership arrangement is the most important association into which a man or woman may enter. Its consequences are far-reaching and difficult to escape, and to a very considerable extent one is bound by the acts of his partners. This being the case, it is of the utmost importance that one should exercise the greatest diligence and care in selecting partners. If any of my readers were to contemplate entering into a partnership agreement with others, he would be sure to select those who were possessed of the most desirable qualities, and those most conducive to success. He would carefully avoid those possessed of Lack of Confidence, Fear, Worry, Discouragement and others of the "I Can't" class. He would seek out the Courageous, Confident, "I Can and I Will" men. He would keep away from those in whom Hate, Malice, Jealousy, Envy, Bigotry and other traits of Ignorance were strongly manifest. He would, in short, choose those who possessed to the greatest possible degree the qualities most conducive to Success and would as carefully avoid those possessed of opposite qualities. There is no doubt of the truth of what I have just said—every one of you will admit it.

Now, I do not purpose telling you about business partnerships of the ordinary kind—you know all about those—but I will call your attention to the fact that you are every day forming partnerships of a most important character and far-reaching in their effects, but of which you probably have been unaware. When your attention is once called to the matter, many things will seem clear to you that have heretofore appeared quite dark, and you will be able to avoid mistakes, in the future, that have been quite common in the past. This is an important lesson, and I trust that you will give heed to what I say.

I have stated, in previous articles, that your mind is a mighty magnet, attracting to itself the thoughts emanating from the minds of others. Like attracts like in the world of Thought, and the prevailing character of your thoughts will be manifested in the character of thought waves drawn to you from the great ocean of thought. Your thought mingles and coalesces with thoughts of a corresponding nature sent out from the minds of others, and both you and the other senders are strengthened in the mental attitude by reason of the joining of forces. You are entering into a mental partnership with those unknown thinkers, and attracting them to you, and you to them. Why do "birds of a feather flock together," in business and everyday life? Simply because they are irresistibly drawn to each other by the Law of Mental Attraction. The people with whom you are brought in contact are those of the same mental key as yourself. You may not agree with this statement, but a close analysis will prove it. The pushing, "hustling," wide-awake man will attract to himself thought-partners of the same stamp, while the man who is afraid is always sure to find himself surrounded by people having the same defects. And not only is this true in the sense that the Law brings you into actual contact with people of the same mental key, but you are connecting yourself with hundreds of others who are thinking along the same lines, although you may never actually come in physical contact with these people. You are going into partnership with them, and will share in the firm's profits and losses, just as you would in case of an ordinary business partnership. And it is easy to foretell upon just what side of the firm ledger the balance will appear.

When you approach a man on business, with your mind laden with thoughts of Fear, Lack of Confidence, etc., you strike a similar keynote in that man, and he instinctively feels that he has no confidence in you or your business, and if he is a man whose predominant note is Courage, he will feel the inharmony and get rid of you as soon as he can. If, on the contrary, he is also a "I Can't" man he will feel a fellow feeling for you, but it will do you no good; it will be a case of "misery loves company," and the first thing you know you will find yourself and that man in an earnest conversation about "dull times," "poor crops," "the country is going to the dogs," "no chance for a man nowadays," "we're all going to the poorhouse," etc., etc. I've seen it happen many a time, haven't you?

But if you are an "I Can and I Will" man, and he is the same, see how different things are. He will warm up to you and will feel that he understands you, and sooner or later you and he will do business with each other, in fact, the arrangement is begun with your first meeting. If you can get yourself in something like the same mental attitude of a man with whom you wish to do business, you will get along with him, never fear.

When you have something in mind upon which you are working, and you are at the same time maintaining the proper mental attitude, you are placing yourself in psychic touch with every other man in the same line who is holding the same mental attitude. You draw inspiration from them, and both parties to the mental partnership share in the profits. Both will share, to a certain extent, in each other's progress and both will draw largely from the mental stock of those who are working along the same lines, but who are holding a negative mental attitude. In fact, the whole store of knowledge and progress along those lines will be tapped by these partners holding the positive mental attitude. New plans, ideas, combinations, schemes, devices will spring into being in their minds, and they will not only help each other, but will draw upon the less positive people. This seems a hard law, but it is like all of Nature's laws, so severe that we are forced sooner or later to learn the lesson. We learn by experience only. This operation of the Law of Mental Attraction is a good example of one of the meanings of that saying, so dark to many: "To him that hath shall be given; to him that hath not shall be taken away, even that which he hath." At any rate, that is the way the law works.

And it is not only in the matter of Success that this mental partnership works. Its operations are manifest everywhere. You will notice that the negative emotions draw to themselves people, thoughts and things upon which they can feed. Let a man or woman manifest Jealousy, and, lo! as if from the earth spring apparent causes for that jealous feeling. All sorts of things seem to conspire to feed "the green-eyed monster" into a state of fatness. And let a man or woman get a notion that people are trying to "slight" them, and let them continue to hold this thought, and it will soon seem to the poor victim of Fearthought as if everybody in the world was determined to snub, slight and tread upon him and hurt his feelings. If he persists in this attitude, life will become a burden too heavy to bear, and there will be no possible relief for him except a change of mental front. Let one imagine that everyone is trying to cheat him, and he will be a lucky man if he does not find that the things he feared have come upon him. Let a man cherish thoughts of Hate and Malice, and sooner or later he will become involved in all sorts of hateful, malicious schemes and occurrences, with his partners whom he has drawn to him. "He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword," is proven every day. He who thinks every man is a rogue will see enough rogues to justify him in his belief, and will probably end up by having people think of him as a rogue—he will draw all sorts of roguish people, things and circumstances to him.

Did you ever start in the morning feeling cross and crabbed? Well, if you did you probably found that after the inevitable domestic row over the buckwheat cakes and coffee—after you had left your wife with tears in her eyes, and the children in good shape to get into trouble in school—that everyone seemed to "have it in for you." Some fellow in the train seemed to deliberately tread on your pet corn, another jostled you, and so on. When you got down to business, everything went wrong, and unless you brought yourself up with a short turn you had a dreadful time of it all day, and were glad when night came that you might sleep it off. You will always find that there are plenty of people waiting to go into mental partnership with you in such cases. If you are looking for fight, you will get it.

I tell you, friends, that people are all more or less in psychic touch with each other, and the sooner we recognize this fact the better it will be for us. This Law of Mental Attraction works either good or bad for us, according to the uses we make of it. If we run contrary to the law we will be taught lesson after lesson, until we learn something. But if we fall in with the workings of the law we will reap the benefits that come to Man when he masters and controls any of Nature's great forces.

Now, don't make partnerships of an undesirable kind. If you do you will have to bear the consequences. If you have already formed such a partnership, dissolve it at once and go into liquidation. After a while you will have cleared up the old debts and straightened matters out and will begin to do business on another basis. And I want to tell you right here that you can get into the best mental firms in the world if you only go about it right. They will not object to you if you are a fit member, and, in fact, they could not keep you out even if they wished. The doors will open at the magic touch of the spoken word backed up by the proper mental attitude. Cut loose from the old thought associations and form new connections. Get in touch with the right kind of thought-waves, people and things. Cultivate the proper mental attitude and demand an entrance to the firm you wish. Good men are scarce in all branches of business, trades and professions. There's room for you—away up at the top, too. Get what belongs to you; do not be cheated out of your heritage. Assert yourself. Join to-day that good, hustling firm, whose name on the signboard reads: "I CAN, I WILL, I DO, I DARE."