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

everybody about him. He is an ambition-arouser, he makes others ashamed of their inaction, their lethargy, and draws them into the current of action with him. His enthusiasm is contagious.

One of the great secrets of the evangelist "Billy" Sunday's power lies in his tremendous enthusiasm. He arouses people, wakes them up, and carries them along with him like a whirlwind. His enthusiasm is contagious and goes through an audience like a mighty electrical cur

rent.

Every soldier in France felt the uplift of Na poleon's forcefulness. His personal force, his enthusiasm, sustained their courage, made heroes out of soldiers who, under some commanders would have been failures. With him they fought harder, marched further and endured more pain than would have been possible with any other leader. Under Napoleon's fiery leadership men walked, without a tremor, to what they knew was certain death.

The miracle which the young peasant girl, Joan of Arc, performed, was due to her marvelous enthusiasm inflamed by the heaven-born conviction that she was divinely commissioned to lead the disorganized armies of France to victory. Even the best brains of France, which were supposed to direct the operations of the army, disciplined by years of military training, could not do what this poor ignorant girl did.

Joan of Arc had never before been near an army. She knew nothing whatever about discipline or training. She had no idea of military manoeuvers, of war tactics. It was her overwhelming enthusiasm, backed by her strong conviction, that performed the world miracle.

Enthusiasm has been the great miracle-worker of the ages and the great settlement builder, always pushing out in the van of civilization.

It took Columbus across the sea, Cæsar across the Rubicon, Napoleon over the Alps.

From the time of the imperishable ancients, Socrates, Aristotle, and Demosthenes, to that of Washington, Lincoln, and Webster, and the great achievers of to-day,—Edison, Marconi, Orville Wright, John Wanamaker, Colonel Goethels, Dr. Carrel,—enthusiasm has been the foundation of every success.

If we were all working enthusiastically at the task for which we are best fitted the face of the world would be changed. If everyone were to go to his job every morning with the anticipated joy that can scarcely wait until the store, the factory, or the studio opens, what a happy place this earth would be! If every employee went to his task with such zest, with such keen delight and such vivid anticipation, it would not be long before multitudes of employees found their own names over the doors of their business or profession. How quickly we should then see the business millennium!

Horace Greely said that the best labor is that of a high-minded workman with an enthusiasm for his work. For such a man there is life, hope, and a large future. For him there is always a place on the main track. He is undaunted by difficulties; they serve only to increase his determination to push on. "Side-tracked" is not in the vocabulary of such a man. He grows. He pushes ahead each day by sheer force of will. Each day's progress may be comparatively small. But he keeps moving. He cannot be side-tracked.

Never before has the youth, fired by enthusiasm, had such an opportunity as he has to-day. This is the age of young men and young women. Their ardor is their crown, before which the languid and the passive bow. The world looks to them to be interpreters of new forms of truth and beauty. Secrets, jealously guarded by nature, are waiting to reveal themselves to the enthusiast who is ready to concentrate his life on the work. Inventions foreshadowed to-day are waiting for enthusiasm to develop them. Every occupation, every profession, every field of human endeavor, is clamorous for enthusiastic workers.

"No matter what your work is," says Emerson, "let it be yours; if you are a tinker or preacher, blacksmith or president, let what you do be in your bones; and you open a door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you."