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have to be exercised
into efficiency, or
stagnation of the
one and apathy in
the other will follow,
and, as Shakespeare-says,
"Your
dull ass will not
mend his pace by
beating."
Knowledge and
experience are the
feeders of the brain.
.All the school
knowledge that can
be obtained should
be taken advantage
of, or the coming days will be saddened
by regrets over lost opportunities. But
so much of our school knowledge is a
matter of rule and rote, and insufficiently
memorized, that it must be backed up
and eked tint by an unwearying effort
to add to the stock from every proper
source—especially by constant courses
in the college of experience. By resolving
to learn something new and useful
every day, however, by cultivating an
inquiring habit of mind, and by practicing
one's powers of observation until
the faculty of seeing the practical side
of things is developed, the equipment of
knowledge soon grows to goodly proportions.
It is what you observe that tells.
"Two prisoners looked from the prison
windows.
One saw the stars, the other the mud."
Always look above the mud. Among
the lessons one learns in life's course.
those of adversity have been said to he
sweet, but the fewer lessons one takes
in this direction the better. Adversity
never lingers long with the man who
has in him the makings of success.
SUCCESS-ABILITIES
Briefly, I think, these may be brought
into some such classification as the following:
Cap-ability, work-ability, responsibility,
adapt-ability, and practicability.
If you examine these, you will
find that there has not been much left
BEST METHODS 551
. . . And Get as Much
as Possible for It"
nut. Of these only one need detain us,
and that is work. The others explain
themselves, and are partly dependent
upon circumstances. Work-ability is the
bravest item in a man's equipment for
"getting on" in business. The founder
of the house of Rothschild, who propounded
many business maxims for the
guidance of his successors, wound up the
lot with this injunction: "Follow these,
then work hard, and you will be certain
to succeed." Thinking, however, is the
chief part of work from nearly every
standpoint. Even tKe hardest physical
labor is eased when thought accompanies
it: for the stroke of a mattock, the blow
of a hammer, or the trundling of a
wheelbarrow, when guided by thought as
well as by bodily strength, has its laborstrain
lightened and relaxed; and the
man who thinks over his manual labor
will be sure one day or other to work
himself up to a better level.
THE WORKING CONSCIENCE
Many are wanting in what I may call
the "working conscience"—that is. the
natural, inborn stimulus for work. There
are still men so little afraid of work that
they even dare to go to sleep beside it.
or at least allow themselves to lapse into
a half-slumberous condition, when super-