In your work, no matter what it is, do your best every day as far as you are able, and by and by this skill in work will stand beside you like a friend and will help your hands and mind.
Have you ever noticed how a mother who has brought up five or six children of her own, takes a baby up in her hands? Such skill in handling an infant is one of the most beautiful things in the world. The mother can do it well, because she has done it often, with all her heart.
We often hear of success and failure in work. Good work is made up of both failure and success. One failure may spur us on to do better work than we have ever done before. A failure may teach us a great deal if we will learn from it. Do not be cast down because of failure. Find out what its lesson is. Do not be too much uplifted over a success. It may turn out a hindrance if we grow conceited over it. Both success and failure are temporary phases of good work.
We should learn not to try too hard, or be over anxious about work. Once an old gentleman who had taken up golf late in life said that his caddy had taught him a great lesson. "You are too anxious." the little boy said. "Just do as well as you can and don't be so anxious. You would play a better game that way."
We do not always believe when we are learning that work will be enjoyable. We have to learn how to work before we can get the full enjoyment from our occupation. You had to learn how to skate and how to dance before you enjoyed skating and dancing. Trying to skate and trying to dance and being awkward, and not knowing how, does not give one the full enjoyment of skating and dancing. But when we do know how and have become skilful, how delightful these recreations are! When we know how to work, work also is full of enjoyment.
It is well to remember that work is a permanent part of our lives. Do not think of it, therefore, as a harsh or unfriendly part of life, but realize the meaning of employment as one of our greatest possessions. It is a means by which we can enter into the full enjoyment of our own faculties and which helps us to understand the importance of life. The comradeship of work is very real and lasting. The girl who goes forward, therefore, into her life's work with a determination to do her best, while she will often meet hard problems, is certain to find usefulness and happiness in her employment.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Acknowledgment is made to Miss B. L. Hutchins' Women in Modern Industry. G. Bell & Sons
[2] To write down even the names of the industries which are carried on in factories with the help of girls and women would occupy much space. A few of the more important places of industry in which girls are employed are whitewear factories and other factories which have to do with the making of clothes, factories where food is prepared for household use, twine factories, paper-box establishments, cigar and tobacco factories, bookbinding establishments, brush-making factories, manufactories of leather, carpets and rugs, boots and shoes and buttons, cotton and woolen-mills, and knitting mills. These are only a few of the factory employments, but the list shows how necessary the work of girls and women is to the nation's industry.