BE A PLODDER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 27 August 1907, Page 4

BE A PLODDER.

Superficiality and shallowness characterise the age. Yet it is an age when the general desire is to get rich quick and to get on at all costs. Everything must be accomplished at a rapid rate. People who patiently plod are in a minority. Short cuts to learning and to sflccess are the great things to-day. Money and success without working for them. That's the -game. Millions are on the alert, and falsehood, dishonesty, and heartlessness arc creeping in. But there are no short cuts of the kind, and, as the multitude will find, barriers of disappointment lie right ahead of those paths. No, the men and women who want to get on in life and who will get on, too, are those who have terrific determination and a grim purpose, who are enthused by ambition, and who are prepared to devote their nights as well as their days to it over a long course of years. You will have a real object in life and therefore something worth living for, and your work will help to keep you happy. But you must be a plodder. Have a definite aim. Be guided in this by inclination and adaptibility. Follow that bent as far as possible in which you feel your ability lies. Prepare for your opportunities. These come to every man, but only those grasp them who are ready to do so. The present is the time for acquiring and accumulating. knowledge and experience. "It is in time of peace that one should prepare for war." Determine not to feel rebuffs, but convert them into means of self-discipline and advancement. Cultivate a sympathetic feeling with your fellow-workers. Put your own personality into your work. Make it instinct with the vitality and keenness which you yourself bring to it. Originality of method and vigor of execution must always win recognition. Be an optimist. Enthusiasm makes preparation easy, buoys up determination, creates personality, ensures continuity of purpose, and is the predominant factor in the achievement of success. But let your optimism be tempered with caution and foresight. It is better to be a self-made man, filled up according to God's original pattern, than to be half a man, made after some other man's pattern.