Take It from Me

Book excerpt: Animated by the vibrant, cheerful spirit of pre-World War I America, this 1916 guide to "the philosophy of Otherfellowship" is like Adam Smith meets Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: it's a directive to living with the kind of gung-ho American enthusiasm and expansive spirit that the Gilded Age was bursting with. From the one basic human law we all must follow-"Be good!"-to our "immense and imperative" duty to vote, this little book contains all manner of wisdom for relating to your fellow human beings: ."Decent living... consists in not being frightened, not being fat, and not being sentimental..""It is precisely because it is predestined that friendship is at once mysterious and precious..""If your work hasn't in it the essential quality of being good for the Other Fellow, he will not pay for it."Loving thy neighbor was never so easy-or so entertaining-as pioneering self-help guru Thompson made it sound almost a century ago.VANCE THOMPSON (1863-1925) is also the author of Eat and Grow Thin and The Ego Book.