Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1917 — LET YOUR WORK BE PERFECT [ARTICLE]

LET YOUR WORK BE PERFECT

Genius and Chance May Not Always Come to All, but Fidelity Will , Win In the End. .<’• The common mistake of young people is that they count too much upon genius and chance. They have heard that Napoleon overran Italy at twen-ty-seven, and William Pitt was prime minister at twenty-four years of age, or they have fallen into the habit of waiting for something to turn up. But the greatest geniuses in art, in literature, in science, in war and statesmanship have been men of indomitable industry; and, as for chance, the least likely thing to turn up in age is the lost opportunity of youth. The seed of future greatness is sown in darkness. The young man who is destined t o w 1 n th e worl d' s a ppi au se i s 11 idd e n now in silent preparation. He knows that if he understands his subject better than anybody else, or if he can do a certain kind of = work .better than anybody else, there can be no doubt at all about the ultimate recognition of his superiority. There is no element of chance in a calculation of that sort. The critics, when they conspire to that end, may occasionally puff a nobody into a fleeting, fictitious celebrity, but will strive in vain to write down the man who comes before the public with something really well done. If the critics carried the fate of authors and artists in their hands they would have crushed Byron and Keats, Wordsworth and Browning, Rossetti and Millet. If the workman is his own critic, if he has an eye to his own faults, if he Compares his work with his ideal rather than with the poor performance of his inferiors, there is no other critic of whom he need be afraid. —See that your work is well done. —Exchange.