Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1884 — Finish What You Begin. [ARTICLE]

Finish What You Begin.

My old Great-grandmother Knox had a way of making her children finish their work. If they began a thing they must complete it. If they undertook to build a cob-house, they must not leave it until it was done, and nothing of work or play to which they set their hands would she allow them to abandon incomplete. I sometimes wish I had been trained in this way. How much of life is wasted in unfinished work! Many a man uses up his time in splendid beginnings. The labor devoted to commence ten things and leave them useless would finish five of them and make them profitable and useful. Finish your work; life is brief; time is short. Stop beginning forty things, and go back and finish four. Put patient, persistent toil into the matter, and, be assured, one completed undertaking will yield yourself more pleasure and the world more profit than a dozen fair plans of whieh people say, “This man began to build, and was not able to finish.” “ Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”— Anon.