Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 4 February 1925, Page 2

In the thought for the times to-day the quotation of the bishop’s dictum may appear to he in the nature of a truism. hut truisms sometimes require to he restated in order to bring them home to a generation which, just because they arc truisms, pay* no attention to them. Of course, when one says that it is the little things that count, one does not mean that it is only the little things; one means rather that the number < little things in life are infinitely greater, in the aggregate, than the large tilings, and one means that a capacity to face successfully all the small things is a training to lace successfully the large tilings. And that is the only sensible interpretation of a proverb, now often scoffed at as representing the view of a petty-minded clerk: “Take care of the pence; the pounds will take care of themselves." \\ hat

means of course is: Acquire the habit of being careful over details, and then von will find that things run wmoothjy. In the very nature of proverbs, remarks a writer enlarging on the subject, no proverb covers all cases, and we know that there have been remarkable men who had no head lor detail ; but I am not discussing, the exceptions. 1 am discussing the average. Everybody wbo lias to live on a definite income knows that it is the small, daily expenditures that run away with the money. The big expenditures, rent, food, clothes, holidays, are allowed ini when one calculates out one's budget ; it is the small personal expenditures, never startling and never stopping, that cause these horrible and unexpected deficit's. Most people can bran themselves to meet a crisis. but Jew people can keep tlicir minds really tidy. We may not. as a rule, leave out the crosses to our t'.s or the dots to our i's in a physical sense, but J am afraid that most of us do in a mental sense. We shirk that little hit of extra care which oiteu points the di lie re i ice between failure and success. After all. life, for the majority of us, is composed of an immense number ol small and trivial events. The average man has about as much elm nee of showing his mettle in some epoch-making way as lie has ol building up a fortune in a week. If lie wants to impress his character on the world he must do it by fulfilling the duties of his everyday tile with absolute mastery, and if lie wants to save money lie must do it paiutully over years. A genius for detail alone mav fimi a limn into a machine, bill a genius for detail added to resolution and imagination lias taken many a man to the highest positions. Such men have, in brief, looked after both the pence and the pounds, because they have perceived that both are, in the philosophic sense, oi equal importance. The impatience with detail which marks so many people to-day is a sign of that carelessness which is so peculiarly a

model'll product. Until people realise that carelessness am! success are incompatible the country will continue to he full of failures.