Carrying Water
A motorist, mired down on a country road, asked a passing lad with a team to pull him out.
Paying the boy's price of two dollars the car owner remarked, "Well, son, do you make much money at this sort of thing?" "You are the fifth I have pulled out to-day," replied the boy.
"I should work nights, too, at that rate," said the motorist.
"I do," said the boy, "at night I haul water for the mud-hole."
In business many young men are like the boy and the mud-hole. They have a single eye to making the job last. Fixed in a situation with certain routine things to do they lose ambition and are chiefly concerned with stretching their duties to fill a day. No origination. No progress. No increasing of efficiency to fit themselves for greater responsibilities.
They are "carrying water" in this blind way oftentimes until it's too late to stride out into bigger things.
Don't "carry water." Mend the road, and find a way to speed up traffic. The pay will be higher and the work more satisfying.