striving habit, who failed. It is the people who disregard their ideals, who distort them by halfdoing things, by indolent, slipshod habits, that never get anywhere in the world.

I know men who cannot saw a board straight, or drive a nail true, who jumble everything they touch, and are always blundering because they never thought it worth while to learn to do things carefully or perfectly. Yet these men wonder why they are not successful!

The trouble with most of us is that we emphasize quantity more than quality in our work. Bigness, rather than perfection, seems to be our aim. Many people think that success consists in doing some big things, but they find that when they attempt a big thing, they have incapacitated themselves from doing it superbly by the habit of doing seemingly small things indifferently or in a slipshod, slovenly manner. How often we hear young people say, "Oh, that is good enough; what is the use of spending so much time on a little thing like that?" "Oh, that's good enough" has spoiled many a career because it was the first step towards deterioration.

A clerk in a store said he did not try to do his best because he did not get much pay. Needless to say this youth did not keep his job very long. This doing poor work because it does not pay much is just what keeps thousands of people from getting on in the world. Work is a question of

character, not of remuneration. One has no right to demoralize his character by doing slovenly or botched work simply because he is not paid much. The employee has something at stake besides his salary. Character, manhood and womanhood are at stake, compared with which salary is nothing.

Music students often think that if they keep practising about so much every day, they will ultimately make musicians, even if they are not so very particular and exacting and painstaking about their work. The same is true of young artists and young people in trades and professions. But practising without infinite painstaking is often worse than idleness, because we form habits of inaccuracy, slovenly habits, which are fatal to all excellence, and which may thwart our very life ambition.

People who never try to do a thing as well as they can, never make much of their lives. Doing a thing over and over again in a particular way renders it improbable that it will ever be done in any other way. Half-hearted work, slipshod methods, so completely demoralize the human machine that it is unable to turn out good work thereafter. Like a chronometer which has once come in contact with a powerful dynamo, it becomes so demoralized that it never keeps good time again. It looks just the same. You cannot find out where the trouble is by taking it apart. It simply does not keep good time. Its character has been changed.

It has been magnetized. Oftentimes a boy who has been obedient, industrious, studious, all at once seems to be demoralized. Some evil magnetism has touched his life, so that he no longer keeps good time, morally. And he will not until this magnetic influence is withdrawn. The boy has been too near the dynamo of vice. The needle of his compass has been deflected from the star of his purpose, as is the compass of a ship in the presence of iron or steel.

There is something within us which responds with an "Amen" to the thing done just right. We are uplifted with a sense of fulfillment of duty, which is a great mental and moral tonic. We think more of ourselves after getting the approval of that "still, small voice" within. It increases selfrespect, it enlarges the capacity for doing things and encourages one to push ahead toward larger triumphs. There is then no protest in the faculties. They all give their approval, and we feel their congratulations. A warmth and a glory surge through one's being and give a powerful stimulus to greater endeavor.

I have a friend who when a boy, struggling to get a start in the world, was often laughed at by his fellow workers for taking so much pains with his work. They would say to him long before he had finished a piece of work, "Oh, what's the use of taking so much pains. That's good enough. Let go and have done with it." But it was not "good

it

enough" for him; and just because it was not, just because he refused to allow any work to go out of his hands until he had put the hallmark of his character upon it, stamped it with excellence, he is a rich and powerful man to-day, while his companions who were satisfied with "good enough" have never been heard from outside of the little New England town where they live.

Your reward will be in proportion to your effort. All that is rotten and inferior in your work will be a perpetual witness against you. With a blabbing tongue it will tell the story of half-hearted or shiftless endeavor. Every botched job, every half-finished task will always be bobbing up somewhere in your after life to mortify and defeat

you.

On the other hand, as a successful manufacturer says: "If you make a good pin, you will earn more money than if you make a bad steam engine." Emerson said, "If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a path to his door."

There is no secret in doing good work. Every one can be a master in his own line if he is willing to take pains, and the results are certain. The reward of thoroughness and efficiency comes to all who persevere to the end. It comes not only in material success, but in the successful life, the real

ization of the victory scored, in the satisfaction of achievement, in the character formed.

"While man is acting on the world through work, work is perpetually reacting on man," says Edwin Markham. A boy learning to saw a straight line is also learning to tell the truth. While discovering the beauties and equities of a symmetrical leaf, he is uncovering in his soul the principles of justice. While a stone mason is shaping a block of granite with conscious care, he is at the same moment shaping the inward and mystic stone of character. A man who puts his soul into his work also puts his work into his soul.

"Verily, so close is work to men that we are told in a sacred scripture that 'their works do follow them' even to eternity. Let us beware, comrades, how we do our work, for work carries fate."