[CHAPTER VIII]
“TRIFLES”
It is ours to climb and dare.—Frederick Lawrence Knowles.
“Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.” The saying is old but the truth is ever new.
Oh, sweet is life when youth is in the blood.—Denis McCarthy.
It is the little things that count, day by day, in the forming of character. The way in which we employ our moments finally becomes the way in which we employ our years.
Down in the busy thoroughfares are boys the world shall know some day.—Samuel Ellsworth Kiser.
As a matter of course every boy will, if he can, do some big, beautiful thing out there in the years to come. But it is a foregone conclusion that every boy must do a vast number of little things before he shall do the larger things. The “trifles” are always at hand waiting to be done, day after day, year after year. And it is the way in which a boy does these little things that gives him the standing he holds in the estimation of those with whom he is intimately associated.
“As the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.” A habit is easy to form but hard to break. Yet the strongest of habits are formed just a little at a time—a small strand is added each day until there is a mighty cable that cannot be broken except by a mighty effort. If it is a good habit, its strength makes it all the better! If it is a bad habit, its strength makes it so much the worse.