THOROUGHNESS
A prosperous Brooklyn manufacturer tells how a single watchword made him wealthy, besides helping him in his character. When a young man he started for Australia in a sailing vessel, intending to go into business there; but he became very weary of the slow and stormy voyage and half determined to leave the ship at a South American port and return home. He asked advice from an old man, who was one of his fellow passengers. The counsel he got was, “If you undertake to do a thing, do it.” He took the advice, and the motto also. In Australia he soon acquired twenty-five thousand dollars, which he brought back to this country and greatly increased by fidelity to the same ever-present watchword.
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If ever a literary success was earned by hard work, General Wallace earned it with “Ben Hur.” He first started the book as a novelette, which he intended to offer to Harper’s Magazine; but the story expanded until it far outgrew the original design, and occupied its author for seven years. Full as it is with the most graphic pictures of Palestine, it is difficult to realize that General Wallace had never been in that country when he wrote the novel. The general was recently asked how he accomplished such wonderful results, and replied as follows:
“I doubt if any novel has ever had more careful studies for its background and life than those made for ‘Ben Hur.’ I knew that the novel would be criticized by men who had devoted their lives to Biblical lore, and I studied Palestine through maps and books. I read everything in the way of travel, scientific investigation, and geography. I had scores of maps and worked with them about me. My best guide was a relief map of Palestine made in Germany. This was hung on my wall, and by means of it I took my characters through the passes of the mountains and up and down the hills, measuring their daily travel by the scale of miles. I also made studies of the bird and animal life of the time and place.” (Text.)
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THOROUGHNESS IMPOSSIBLE
Thoroughness is all right to talk about, but there is nothing that has been thoroughly done in this world, and it will be a good many years before anything will be thoroughly done. Talk about absolute thoroughness! It is nonsense! We may attain unto it as we attain unto perfection, but we might as well attempt to shoot the moon as to reach thoroughness or perfection in this world. Is there a single college graduate who knows thoroughly anything that he had studied in his college course? Take Latin, which the average college student studies seven solid years. What does he know when he gets through? Can he talk it? Can he even read an author which he has never before seen, with any degree of fluency and acceptability? Then take mathematics. How many students are thorough in it? We venture that the roll-call of college graduates who could be counted thorough in mathematics would be called in an extremely short space of time. Our ideals should be high. This is all right. We should aim at never doing anything in a half-way manner. But the tasks half done, the studies half learned, the books half read, and the work half accomplished constitute by far the largest portion of our lives.—School Journal.
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