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enthusiasm even in his play. In whatever he does there is an undercurrent of personal force which tells us he is going to amount to something in the world.

It does not matter at the time whether he is playing ball, conversing, or joking, we cannot help getting the impression that he is marked for advancement, is destined for something higher.

"Against the hindrances of the world nothing great and good can be carried without a certain fervor, intensity, and vehemence; these joined with faith, courage, and hopefulness make enthusiasm," says James C. Fernald.

No learning, no natural ability can take the place of a burning soul, a heart on fire with enthusiasm, stirred to its very depths by zeal. Enthusiasm has taken innumerable inventors through years of drudgery, through numberless hardships, when friends had forsaken and enemies did their best to discourage and dishearten.

It was enthusiasm that enabled Napoleon to make a campaign in two weeks that would have taken another at least a year or even more to accomplish.

Many of us do not realize the tremendous force that radiates from a dead-in-earnest soul, from one who is fired with his life purpose. I have seen a salesman so on fire with enthusiasm in his work. that he seemed to take a prospect right off his feet, no matter how prejudiced he might be against him

and how determined not to be influenced when he began talking to him. It is a real study to watch this man's face, aglow with the fine spirit of enthusiasm and zest behind it. In most cases he does not need to urge people to buy whatever he is selling. He radiates such a flood of sunshine and good cheer and creates such a glowing picture of his merchandise and what wonderful things it will do that customers feel they must have it. While under his spell, they consider it a privilege to have the chance to buy. His enthusiasm so convinces them of the value of his proposition that they often voluntarily suggest his calling on their friends, thus giving him the advantage of their endorsement.

A man who is enthusiastic, whether he is an inventor, a discoverer, a merchant, or a solicitor, a traveling salesman, or a school-teacher, will find the doors to success open magically to him.

Enthusiasm has always been back of every great human achievement, and no man can be enthusiastic in anything until he lives for it, until he can fling the weight of his whole being into it.

Some of us often wonder why others who started out with us make such tremendous strides and get so far ahead in a short time. We need not look far for the reason. We will find very quickly that they are more enthusiastic than we are, that they have a burning zeal, a great passion for what they undertake.

There are many men in middle life who are practically where they were when they left school or college. Their enthusiasm has long since given out; their work has become drudgery. They have not advanced a particle; some have even retrograded, and they cannot understand why they do not get on, why they are not more successful.

You, my unsuccessful friend, may say you have never had a fair chance, that your employers have been prejudiced against you. Of course they are prejudiced against poor, half-done work. Perhaps you have not shown any marks or indications of winning material. They are looking for employees with warm, vigorous blood in them, with enthusiastic life vim, and if they do not see these qualities in you, can you wonder that they are not favorably impressed?

There is nothing an employer dislikes more than the dragging around, the moping of employees, who look as though they had no interest in life, and were just working against time. If one is incompetent there is a good excuse for discharging him, but if he is simply indifferent, without spirit or energy, it is harder for an employer to handle him.

In this age of competition, where everything is pusher or pushed, there is little hope of advancement for the employee who loses his enthusiasm at the start; for those who not only do not hold the pace at which they set out, but who do not

also improve on it. The half-hearted, indifferent worker, without vim or enthusiasm, will never be more than a drudge, an underling. In dull times, or in a business crisis, he will be the first to be "laid off."

The other day I overheard a business man say that when an employee got stale with him that was the end of him. Perhaps not a single person in this man's employ ever dreamed that he was liable to be discharged because he was getting "stale." They may not have realized that employers in general regard enthusiasm in employees as a very great asset in their business and the lack of it as a liability.

Everybody knows that an enthusiastic man does things, that he has initiative, originality. Because he has enthusiasm, he has also courage, confidence,

assurance.

I have never known a man to make a marked success of his life who did not bring the right spirit to his work, who did not take supreme pride in his vocation, who did not look upon it as a profession, no matter how lowly others might regard it.

I once knew a shoemaker who was really an artist and not an artisan although he cobbled shoes. He was as proud of his job as a master artist could be of the picture on his canvas. Although a humble cobbler he was known and respected by a large section of the community where he lived.

He would always have a lot of work ahead waiting for him when other shoemakers were idle, because he was an artist while they were merely artisans.

All necessary occupations are respectable and can be made very honorable. All workers belong to one family. We are all necessary to one another. Men who clean the streets and take care of the sewers of the city, the men who labor in the health department are even more necessary than those who write books and paint pictures, because but for them the health of the entire community would be in peril.

I never see a man working in the ditches, on the railroad tracks, cleaning the streets or working on the sewers or laying the pavements but I feel grateful to him for making conditions so delightful, so healthful, and living so easy for me.

"Happy is the man who has a task to keep him from idleness and who enjoys the task," said John Burroughs in a recent interview.

Joy, enthusiasm in his work is the life philosophy that keeps the veteran author-naturalist young, happy, and vigorous in his seventy-ninth year. Outside of his life work he still finds time to do the chores at his home, "Slabsides," where he cleans out the furnace, chops wood, and rakes up the yard with a vim which would put many a youth to shame.

The enthusiastic man is a perpetual prod to

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