One day he was called into the manager's office. He came out chop-fallen and took his personal belongings from the assistant's desk. Another man was promoted to the place he had failed to fill. He went back to his clerk's stool and is roosting there today.
I know a salesman who closed so many orders the first time he covered his territory that he came back to headquarters with an inflated idea of his importance. He strutted into the president's room and boasted of what he had done. The delighted head of the business gave him a cigar and invited him to tell the story. The salesman betrayed such egotism that his employer was disgusted. The president was plain-spoken. He warned the successful salesman against getting a "swelled head."
The egotist felt insulted. He resigned his position, arrogantly declaring that he would not work for a house where results were so little appreciated. He was cocksure of himself. However, when he offered his services to a competing firm, his application was turned down. The rebuff stunned him. He did not realize that his egotism disgusted the second executive as much as the first. The salesman's spirit was broken. He has never since been more than a fair peddler.
Giant and Pigmy Successes
Think of "successful" men you know. Compare them as they are now with the men they used to be before they succeeded. As they rose did they loom bigger and bigger in your respect, or grow smaller and smaller in admirable qualities? There are so-called successful men whose characters seem to be dwarfed by the mountain tops they attain. Other men grow to be giants and overshadow any eminences they climb. The littleness of the last Kaiser and Crown Prince of Germany was only emphasized by their elevation above the common people. On the other hand the bigness of Lincoln and Roosevelt was so tremendous that their personalities towered above even the highest honor in the world.
Breaking Training
When football players are fighting for the championship of the season, they are governed by rigid rules of living. They keep themselves fit by strict diet, by the avoidance of all dissipations, by hardening exercise, and by recuperative rest. But after the "big game" is won, they break training. They stuff themselves with rich food until their bodies and minds are sluggish. Then they celebrate their victory by some sort of jollification that lasts half the night. The next day a second-rate team could beat the champions.
A man who has kept himself lean, hard-muscled, and healthy all the way to the achievement of his ambition is apt to take on flabby flesh and gout when he succeeds. The celebration of Thanksgiving is an ordeal from which one does not recover for weeks. Turkey and mince pie immoderately eaten are poisons. Our annual Feast Day is more deadly than the Fourth of July.
Rusting in Self-Satisfaction