“I want you,” said Philip D. Armour to one of his employees, “to grow into a man so strong and big that you will force me to see that you are out of place among the little fellows.”

If you want to be a salesman “so strong and big” that you will be “out of place among the little fellows,” you must be as physically fit as was John L. Sullivan in his prime. At that time the mere sight of Sullivan entering the ring struck such terror into the heart of his opponent that the fight was half won before a blow was struck. It seemed to the small man like a desperate venture to tackle a giant with such a superb physical presence. The famous pugilist’s appearance had as much to do with his success as had his knowledge of the technique of the ring.

If you want to win out (and who does not?) you must enter the ring—the arena of life—with all the power you can muster, in superb health, at the top of your condition, capable of putting up your biggest fight. You can do this and come out with your flag flying if you are good to yourself, if you keep fit. But if you allow all sorts of leaks of power to drain away your energy, your brain force, your will power, you will be in no condition to make the fight of your life.

You should be as well prepared physically for the contest as the prize fighter who is determined to keep his record. Or, like the Greek god Hercules, you should be able to win largely by the force of your reserve power. It was said that Hercules made such an impression of great reserve force on his antagonist that he never had to put forth much strength in wrestling. He won as much by the impression of confident power which he radiated, as by the degree of strength he exerted.

In other words, if you do not back up your general ability and special training with robust health you will be forever at a disadvantage in the game of life. You must keep yourself fit for your job, always in a condition to do your best or you will be handicapped in the game.

It is the law of life that the “weakest shall go to the wall.” Frailness of body is an inevitable handicap in life. Physical weakness largely discounts the possibilities of achievement. The slow but striving tortoise may beat out the hare in the race. The steadfast, plodding student may take the prizes of life which his more brilliant competitor never attained. But the tortoise, though slow, is sound of body. Cripple him and all his plodding will avail him little.

True, there have been weak men who have done wonders in life in spite of frailness and physical infirmity. But they are only the exceptions that prove the rule. Alexander Pope, “the gallant cripple of Twickenham,” sewed up in canvas; St. Paul, short in stature, of inferior presence and almost blind, are types of the men whose great souls overcame their bodily weakness. CÆsar, Pascal, Nelson, were other types of the indomitable spirit which can not be limited by sickness or infirmity. But, in the main, the man who “makes good” has good health.

As a salesman you carry all your capital with you. You are in business, but you carry everything connected with it, your factory, your sales department with you. Your machinery assets are mental, and if you don’t do your best to keep them in fine condition you will show about as much sense as a farmer who would leave all his valuable farm machinery out-doors in all sorts of weather, to be ruined by wind and dew, rain and snow. Your skill, your expertness, your facility of expression, your tact, your discretion, your power of discrimination, your knowledge of human nature, your courage, your initiative, your resourcefulness, your cheerfulness, your magnetism, in fact, every one of your mental faculties is a part of your business capital, is an asset, and its condition depends entirely on the care you take of the engine which furnishes the motor power for all your mental machinery. That engine is your body.

The physical soil is the soil in which your faculties are nourished. If this soil is impoverished, if your vitality is low, if you are sapping your energies by vicious, ignorant, or foolish habits, your faculties will not thrive.

Some time ago an ambitious young fellow came to me and asked me to tell him how to increase his ability and his power to achieve things. He was pale and emaciated, with something like signs of dissipation in his face. The young man seemed very anxious to get along in the world but, evidently, he had taken the wrong path. A few questions brought out the fact that although not dissipating in the ordinary sense, the course he was pursuing was almost as disastrous to his health. He was sitting up till one or two o’clock at night, studying, while working very hard in the day-time, and to brace up his depleted strength he was not only drinking coffee and tea to excess, but he was also taking whiskey, and even drugs. He did not seem to know that this artificial stimulus to his brain was like a whip to a tired horse, and that it was only a question of time until he would be a physical and mental wreck.

It is amazing how ignorant many otherwise intelligent people are when it comes to a question of body and health building. Young people often ask me to tell them how they can increase their ability, and in nine cases out of ten I find that, like the young man above, they are doing some fool things that defeat the very object they have in view.

Now, the surest way to increase your ability, to multiply and strengthen your faculties, is to lay a good foundation of health, and to guard it as you would your most precious possession—for that is really what it is. Vigorous, abounding health will emphasize, reinforce and multiply the forcefulness of all the faculties, and the sum of these faculties constitutes your ability, the force that achieves, that creates.

It will make a tremendous difference to you what sort of a man you take to your prospect. I say “you take,” because you are the master of the salesman. There is something bigger back of the salesman, than the salesman himself. You are the salesman’s manager, his trainer, his educator. There is a master in you, who, to a very large extent, dictates the sort of a man “you take” to your prospect, because he will be the sort of a man you make him. To be a whole man, mentally, physically, and spiritually is your business. To be deficient on any of these planes is to be only two parts a man. To be one hundred per cent. a man—that is your problem.

The human machine is very complicated, and even a little thing may seriously impair its harmony and efficiency. A bad fitting shoe may cut down your effectiveness temporarily, or as long as you wear it, twenty-five per cent. A speck of dirt in the eye would cripple a Napoleon, as a hair in the works would seriously injure the best timepiece in the world. A hasty, bolted lunch, of poor, adulterated food, may impair your digestion, cut down your brain power and make you ineffective when it is of the utmost importance that you be effective.

Efficiency lies in the symmetry and perfect functioning of all of your organs. If they are not trying to help you make a sale; if you have treated them badly and they are protesting, they will beat you. You may think that, no matter how you feel, you can put a deal over by sheer will power, but remember that your will power is dependent upon the harmonious action of all your bodily functions. It will weaken just as soon as any one of these is impaired. If not one, but several of them—your digestive organs, your liver, your heart, your kidneys, your brain, are fighting against you, trying to defeat your purpose, you will not win out no matter how hard a fight you put up. Many a superb salesman has finally lost out by making an enemy of all the organs which make for health and success.

Do you realize what goes into every sale you make? Did it ever occur to you that your brains, your education, your training, your experience, your skill, your ingenuity, your resourcefulness, your originality, your personality—about all your life capital is flung into every selling transaction?

The result of every canvass you make will depend very largely upon how much of yourself you fling into it, and how intensely, how enthusiastically, cheerfully, and tactfully you fling yourself in. You cannot bring the whole of yourself to the sale unless every function of your body gives its consent. Your physical organism must be in perfect harmony or your vitality will be lowered, and you will be robbed of a certain percentage of your possible power.

The great thing when you approach a prospect is to be all there, not to leave ten, fifteen, twenty or twenty-five per cent. of yourself in the bar-room or in some other vicious resort the night before. Do not fling a lot of your ability away in bad food, or in a too rich and complicated diet, viciously taken. Be sure when you call on a prospect that you take a good digestion along with you; it is the best friend of your brain. If your digestion is ruined by over-eating, or if your brain is not well fed, no amount of will power, or cocktail or whiskey braces, will compensate for the loss you suffer.

Many a promising salesman has failed to make good because he made a habit of turning night into day and could take only about half of himself to his work. Many a cracker-jack salesman has lost a sale by partaking too heartily of dinner, or by a fit of indigestion brought on by some indiscretion in eating.

Multitudes of people go through life working hard, trying desperately to succeed, but are terribly disappointed by the meagerness of their achievement, simply because they did not take care of their health. They are all the time devitalized; they lack blood, or it is of poor quality; it lacks fire and force, and, of course, the brain and all the faculties deteriorate to correspond with the blood.

The achievement follows the vitality, and this in turn depends on the general care of the body. The kind of food, its quality and amount, the manner in which we partake of it, our physical habits, work, rest, recreation, sleep,—these are the things on which health and vitality depend. These furnish our physical energy and achievement depends upon energy. It would be impossible even for the brain of a Webster to focus with power, if fed with poor ill-nourished blood.

Everywhere we see bright, educated young men and women, with good brains, crippled by poor health, mocked by great ambitions which they can never realize. A large part of their ability is lost to the world because of some physical weakness which might be remedied by careful, scientific living.

Just glance over the young men you know and see what a small part of their ability goes into their life work, because of their impaired assets, through foolish or vicious living habits. They are selling their integrity, squandering their life capital in all sorts of dissipation, bringing perhaps not more than twenty-five per cent. of their actual ability to their life work.

How often we hear the remark: “Poor fellow! he was always a victim of bad health, but for that he would have accomplished great things.” “Mentally able but physically weak” would make a good epitaph for thousands of failures.

A weakness anywhere in you will mar your career. It will rise up as a ghost all through your life work, at unexpected moments, mortifying, condemning, convicting you. Every indiscretion or vicious indulgence simply opens a leak which drains off your success and happiness possibilities. There is no compensation for waste of health capital. Health raises the power of every faculty and every possibility of the man, and there is no excuse for losing it through carelessness, dissipation or ignorance.

Nor can one plead mere weakness or lack of energy as a handicap, an excuse for failure. Nature is no sentimentalist. If you violate her law you must pay the penalty though you sit on a throne. She demands that you be at the top of your condition, always at your best, and will accept no excuse or apology.

Whatever your work in life, the secret of your success and happiness is locked up in your health, in your brain, your nerves, your muscles, your ambition, your ideal, your resolution. It is up to you to be a whole man. You cannot afford to be less. You cannot afford to dwarf your career or botch it by going to your task with stale brains. You cannot do first-class work with second-class brain power, with a brain that is fed by poison,—blood vitiated by abnormal living or dissipation. You cannot afford to go to your work used up, played out. Trying to sell merchandise with stale brains keeps many a salesman capable of real mastership in a mediocre position. You cannot do a master’s work with a muddy brain which was not renewed, refreshed, by plenty of sound sleep, healthful recreation, and vigorous exercise in the open air.

In other words, if you expect to make the most of yourself you must be good to yourself. Strangled health means strangled ability. If you murder your health you murder all your chances in life.

No man ever does a great thing in this world who does not protect the faculties he is using with jealous care. Watch your generating power. Remember that you see the world largely through your stomach. Its condition will determine the condition of your brain. Poor digestion gives you poor blood, and poor blood a poor brain. Few people realize what a tremendous factor health plays in their success. Men give the brain credit for a large amount of their success which is due to the stomach, which has everything to do with physical health and robust vitality.

Not long ago I was talking to a salesman who said he guessed he was losing his grip; didn’t know how it was, but he was not making sales as he used to. He didn’t have the same grit and enthusiasm; guessed he was sliding down hill, going backward instead of forward. Formerly, he said, he always approached a customer with the expectation of getting an order, but latterly he was in great doubt; he could not get on full steam, a resolute determination to win. Now, when a man gets into this condition he is not fit to solicit business. Nature is calling to him: “Stop, Look, Listen.” It is time for him to call a halt, and see what is the trouble with his engine.

If you would be a master in your specialty heed Nature’s danger signals, which she puts up all through your body. That “tired feeling” is one of them; brain fag, headache, is one of them; indigestion is one of them; apathy, “don’t feel like it,” poor appetite,—all these things are signals to slow down. But instead of slowing down and repairing, most of us try to speed up with all sorts of stimulants and run past these danger signals, with the result that we either wreck our life train or very seriously injure it.

No man can afford to ignore Nature’s warnings, but least of all can the salesman, on whose physical condition everything depends. Other men can depute their work, at least for a time, to those under them; but the salesman cannot do this, for he is strictly a one-man concern, and everything depends on his health. He must always be at the top of his condition; and every quality needed in his work is sharpened and braced by vigorous health.

How comparatively easy it is, for instance, for a healthy man to be hopeful, optimistic, enthusiastic. How difficult for a chronic dyspeptic to be any of these—to be kind, gentle, generous, cheerful, obliging. His natural disposition may not be at fault, for the tendency of ill health is to make a man cross, crabbed, fault-finding, fretful, hard, pessimistic.

“Touchiness,” a defect which makes so many men and women unbearable, usually comes from some weakness or physical ailment. A great many so-called “sins” are due to a depleted physical condition. It is so much easier for a man to control himself when he is well, to say “No” with emphasis, when, if he were suffering from some physical disability, he might say “Yes,”—anything to get rid of annoyance and to get into a more comfortable condition.

How much health has to do with one’s manners! How easy to be courteous and accommodating when one feels the thrill of health surging through his whole being; but how hard to be polite, gentle, amiable, when one feels ill, weak, and nervous, and wants to be let alone! How hard to carry on an interesting conversation when all of one’s physical standards are down!

Then again, how the health affects the judgment! The judgment is really a combination of a great many other faculties, and the condition of each seriously affects the quality of the combination.

One’s courage is largely a matter of physical health. How quickly the ailing man, to whom everything looks blue, becomes discouraged! Everything looks black to people whose physical standards are demoralized.

Horse trainers know that a horse’s courage during the contest depends a great deal upon its being in a superb physical condition. It is the same with the horse’s master—man. Courage, poise, masterfulness, resourcefulness, physical vigor go together. Nervousness, timidity, uncertainty, doubt, hesitation, usually accompany depleted vitality.

The bull-dog tenacity which plays such a part in every life worth while has a physical basis. The will power, which is a leader in the mental kingdom, depends very largely upon the health. How different, for example, obstacles look to the man who is ailing all the time, suffering pain, compared with the way they look to a man who is full of vigor and energy. The man who is well plans great things to-day, because he feels strong and vigorous. Obstacles are nothing to him; he feels within himself the power to annihilate them. But to-morrow he is ill, and the obstacles which were only molehills yesterday, loom up like mountains, and he does not see how he can possibly conquer them.

We look at things through our moods, and moods are largely a question of physical health. The man who is strong and full of the courage of abounding vitality wants something hard to wrestle with; he feels the need of vigorous exercise. But the man whose vitality is low has no surplus to spare. Slight difficulties look formidable to him; trifles are exaggerated into serious obstacles, which seem insurmountable. There is confusion all through his mental kingdom, and his faculties will not work harmoniously. There is a tremendous wear and tear on the physical economy of the man in poor health.

The faculty of humor was given man to ease him over the jolts, to oil the bearings of life’s machinery; but ill health often crushes out the sense of humor, and makes life, which was intended to be bright and cheerful, sad and gloomy. Loss of good red blood corpuscles has much to do with one’s sense of humor as well as one’s manners and disposition. The man in poor health is in no condition to appreciate the joys of life. Everything loses its flavor in proportion to his lowered vitality.

Ill health very materially weakens the power of decision. A man who, when in vigorous health, decides quickly, finally and firmly, when in poor health, wobbles, wavers, reconsiders. His purpose, which was once a mighty force in his life, lacks virility, has lost much of its strength. In fact, all of his life standards drop in proportion to the decline in physical vigor.

Again, the quality of health has a great deal to do with the quality of thought. You cannot get healthy thinking from diseased brain cells or nerve cells. If the vitality is below par the thought will drop to its level.

What magic a trip to Europe or a vacation in the country often produces in the quality of one’s thought and work. The writer, the clergyman, the orator, the statesman, who was disgusted with what his brain produced comes back to his work after a vacation and finds himself a new man. He can not only do infinitely more work with greater ease, but his work has a finer quality. The writer is often surprised at his grip upon his subject and his power to see things which he could not get hold of before. There is a freshness about his style which he could not before squeeze from his jaded brain. The singer who broke down comes back from a vacation with a power of voice which she did not even know she possessed. The business man returns with a firmer grip upon his business, a new faculty for improving methods, and a brighter outlook on the world. The brain ash has been blown off the brain cells which were clogged before; the blood is pure; the pulse bounding, and, of course, the brain cells throw off a finer quality of thought, keener, sharper, more penetrating, more gripping.

Many a salesman could add twenty-five or fifty per cent. to his power by easing the strain of life now and then, especially when Nature hangs out any of her warning signals.

Supposing an Edison or some other great inventor should discover a secret for doubling one’s ability, what would we not all do or give to get this secret? Yet every one knows a process for doubling ability which never fails. It is health-building, vitality-building, by simply exercising common sense in the matter of living. There is nothing complicated in this; it means eating just enough, not too much or too little, of the foods that give force and power, scientific eating of these foods; scientific care of ourselves, exercise, recreation, play; getting out of doors whenever possible and absorbing power from the sun and air; getting plenty of sleep in a well-ventilated bedroom; regular systematic habits; right thinking, triumphant thinking, holding the victorious attitude toward life, toward our work, toward our health, toward everything. Now here is the secret of doubling ability. We all have it; all that is necessary is to put it in practice.

There is no other thing that will pay a salesman better than putting it in practice every day. Keeping himself in superb physical condition will not only give a wonderful flavor to life, but it will add great interest and charm to his personality. Good health is the foundation of personal magnetism; it is the secret of the sparkle in the eye, the buoyant spirit, the keen whip to the intellect which sharpens all the wits. Many a sale has been clinched by the pleasing appearance of a salesman, the charm of a bright, flashing eye, a clear skin, a firm step, and a straight pair of shoulders.

How quickly we can tell by the appearance of horses on the street what sort of care they get. How fine a carefully groomed horse looks and how well he feels. He seems to have a sense of pride in his personal appearance, whereas the horse which is seldom if ever groomed, shows his neglect by the sharp contrast.

The same thing is true of individuals. I have a friend who takes infinite pains to keep himself in prime condition. He says his human machine is his most precious asset and that he cannot afford to neglect his exercise; he cannot afford to be irregular in his eating habits, or to eat foods which are not body builders, health and force producers; he cannot afford to lose sleep, or to do anything which will lower his vitality. He is equally careful about his grooming, and always looks fit, in the pink of condition. Another friend of mine is just the opposite. He will take a hot bath in about ten minutes; he dresses in a hurry; never bothers about his exercise or his food, and the result is the two men present as great a contrast as the well-groomed, well-cared for horse and the ill-groomed, ill-cared for one.

It is of little use to have all the qualities which make a good salesman if these qualities are not kept in prime condition. Yet there are a great many salesmen who do not take time enough to care for themselves properly, to keep their wonderful machine in fine trim, in superb physical and mental condition.

It was said that Ole Bull could never be induced to go on playing unless his violin was in perfect tune. If a string stretched the least bit, no matter how many thousands were waiting for him, he would stop until he had put his violin in perfect tune again. Ole Bull would not allow himself even for a moment to be anything but a master.

You cannot go to your prospect with the brain of a master salesman, victory-organized, if your instrument is out of tune. If you do not keep yourself tuned to concert pitch; if you do not take the trouble to make a fine adjustment of your wonderful human instrument each day; if you do not put yourself in tune each morning for the day’s work; if there is the least inharmony in any of the marvelous mechanism of your body, you will go on all day producing discord instead of harmony. In other words, you will be a failure instead of a success.

When you approach a prospect be sure you are “in tune with the Infinite,” (with the highest law of your being) that you are all there, that you are not sixty, seventy-five, eighty, ninety or ninety-nine per cent. present, but that you are all there, that you are a hundred per cent. present, and that this hundred per cent. is ready to strike the blow. More will depend upon your body and mind being in complete harmony, in perfect tune than on all of your special training in salesmanship.

In this age of fierce competition physical vigor plays a tremendous part. It is an age of efficiency force, an age which requires masterfulness. The victors in the great life game to-day, as a rule, are men with powerful vitality, tremendous staying power. Whether you win out or lose in the game will depend largely on your reserve power, your plus vitality.

Keep yourself always fit so that you can do your best, the highest thing possible to you, with ease and dignity, without struggle or strain, and you will be a master salesman. Always be at the top of your condition, and you can approach your prospect with the assurance of victory, the air of a conqueror, with the superb confidence that wins. Keep your human machine in perfect tune, and you will radiate power, masterfulness; you will exhale force and magnetism from every pore; you will be the sort of salesman that every customer is glad to see—A MASTER SALESMAN.