11. PREPARATION.—"Success in any calling is the fruit of intelligent preparation." You may have good personal appearance; you may have the right thing; you may have confidence and courage, and still fail from lack of a complete knowledge of your subject and how to work. You must therefore, prepare as thoroughly for your work as you would to deliver an essay or an oration in some great contest. You should know, if possible, all there is to know on the subject, and should keep up with the times by continuing to study and read everything attainable on your business. President Garfield said, "A trained man will make his life tell. Without training men are left on a sea of luck where thousands go down while one meets with success." Work is the only key to preparation and after you have worked to learn how to work, continue to work at your work.
12. In an address, entitled, "True and False Methods of Success," Dr. A. C. Knudson, formerly of Allegheny College, now of Boston Theological School, recently said:
"All physiology and psychology make it perfectly clear that exercise, work, lies at the basis of all real strength and achievement. Nothing is accomplished except through it. If you want knowledge you must toil for it; if food you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it; toil is the law. And it is the law of all life. Education, training, does not prepare us to get along without work. It only fits us for work. Work is the law of life. Nothing good comes except through it. It is the basic principle of all sound pedagogy. 'What we learn strengthens only in proportion to the effort we put forth.' This is the one principle of achievement in the world, in business or professional life. The advocacy of the strenuous life may have been a little overdone in these latter days. But in its fundamental principle, it is the one method of success. The law for all life, for the salesman and the statesman, for the merchant and the prince, for the lawyer and the preacher, for the teacher and the manufacturer, is the same as that for the football game; 'Hit the line hard; don't foul and don't shirk; but hit the line hard!"
13. CHARACTER.—A much greater and more permanent benefit is to be derived from such preparation, than immediate success. The thoroughness with which you prepare for this work and the manner in which you go about it, each stamps itself upon you not only while making preparation, but while engaged in the work. Hold in mind that you are building your work into your character and your character into your work. You cannot slight your work or your preparation in any particular and build a strong character. Every step taken has its effect upon your future. Think how closely work and character are allied, and the tremendous influence each exerts upon the other. They act and react on each other until the one is a perfect index of the other. "Show me a man at his work or tell me how he works and I will explain his character to you. Or, tell me a man's real character, and I will tell you how he works, what to expect of him under various conditions," says a student of men.
This knowledge of real life and real character is becoming more general than ever before. "You can fool all of the people some of the time.
