GOOD WORK

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 12, 29 January 1937, Page 4

GOOD WORK

"All good work demands that interest must be backed by trained ability, and consistent success requires that good work must be sustained. The helief that the other fellow's oecupation is more attractive and less exacting than our own comes too easily. We are not always prepared to submit to the prolonged tests of apprentioeship, nor do we readily perceive that every efflcient man, even in his years of success, continues to be concerned with his fitness for his ohosen work . . . 'Whai is a great life?' The famous Frenchman who asked the question added his own reply: It is a thought in youth carried out in rrpened years.' Here is a noble and lucid definition of the successful life for contrast with the planless effort which adds one day's work and one day's wage to another, and trusts to blind chance that some form of achievement will emerge. And here a double emphasis is noted. Personal decision, the 'thought in youth,' is but a preliminary. "It means that one has begun to build ; there is a blue-print on the workshop table, and possibly a few brieks in the fonndation. It is a pleasant business, this heginning; it is, indeed, just a little too easy. Any youth will attack a fresh oecupation with interest and enthusiasm; any of us can snmmoii such qualities as courage and detei'mination when facing a novel prospect. Unfortunately, the ability to make a flying start is not always accompanied by the very differgat abpifcy to persevere to a good finish. — Sir Harold Bellman.