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When his literary agent icily described his novel as "worthless," Carnegie's "heart almost stopped." But, plucking up his courage, he decided to 'borrow the ideas of a lot of other writers" and make them into "the best book on public speaking . . . ever . . . written." This book flopped, too, and Carnegie decided that instead of borrowing from, or acting like others, "you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life." Out of the depths of his heart and personal experience, he drew How to Win Friends and Influence People. Today, wiry, white-maned Dale Carnegie is one of the world's richest authors and most famous men. He has recovered his faith in God and man and is kingpin of the Dale Carnegie Institute of Effective Speaking and Human Relations, whose system is used in 150 U.S. cities. "I can honestly say," says he, "that I have never spent a day or an hour . . . lamenting the fact that I am not another Thomas Hardy."