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."

THE MAN WITH INITIATIVE

There is always a place for the man with initiative.

Do not be afraid to let yourself out. Originality is power; imitation is death.

The man who would succeed to-day in any marked way must have initiative, he must be self-reliant, inventive, original.

The man who dares to think his own thought and originate his own method, who is not afraid to be himself, and is not a copy of some one else, quickly gets recognition.

There are ten thousand who can follow to one who can lead; but the whole world is hunting for the man who can step out of the crowd and do the unusual, the original, the individual thing, the man who can.deliver the goods.

E

LBERT HUBBARD once said: "Initiative

is doing what needs to be done without being told." It is only now and then an employee is inclined to go ahead without being told; is on the lookout for something in his work which he can improve, some way of simplifying processes, of shortening methods, some more effective way of doing things. The habit of always working under instructions, of waiting to be told what to do, waiting for somebody to begin a thing which we are to follow up, is paralyzing to great achievement.

It has been said that the world reserves its big

prizes for but one thing,—initiative. Initiative opens the door to the place above us. Those who wait for fate, or luck, or opportunity, to lead the way, never get very far in this world, but the man with initiative fares forth and arrives. I know of no one thing outside of honesty that plays such a prominent part in one's success in life as vigorous initiative. The man who has the courage to begin things and the persistency to finish them is in demand everywhere.

Yet how often we meet people who are afraid to begin, afraid to start anything, although they may feel confident they are capable of carrying it out successfully!

Many men and women seem incapable of selfpropulsion. They depend upon somebody to manipulate them, to lead them, to point the way, to blaze the path. They seem incapable of setting themselves to work, incapable of self-direction.

Such people are like the birds and the fish, which live in flocks and schools and are seldom seen alone, but follow a leader. A mackerrel would be lost without its school. Watch a flock of birds flying south in the autumn. Only one of them apparently does any independent thinking, and all the rest fly in the direction he is leading.

Many a man is unsuccessful in life simply because he is one of a flock or herd and follows his leader. He does not do his own thinking; he lets some one else think for him.

Fortunately for the world, however, there are some men too great to go in flocks, too great to follow. There are many men large enough to do their own thinking, to make a program and follow it out.

When General Leonard Wood, head of the . United States Army, was an interne in the City Hospital of Boston, a child was brought into the hospital who was in great danger of choking to death. For an interne to perform an operation without the consent of the house surgeon was against the hospital rules, but young Wood did not wait for the usual red tape. He operated on the child quickly, and saved its life. He was severely reprimanded and, if I remember correctly, expelled for this violation of rules, but his prompt action had saved a life, and had shown that the young physician could decide and act quickly on his own responsibility. It was this very ability to act quickly in an emergency which attracted President Roosevelt, who helped him to his unprecedented rise from an assistant army surgeon in a Western military camp to the head of the United States Army.

One of the best surgeons I ever knew, in an emergency case in Italy, in a remote part of the country where he could not get any instruments, performed a delicate operation on a woman with an instrument which he manufactured himself in a blacksmith shop. If only an ordinary surgeon