a pastorate on Fifth
Avenue:--From a professorship in an humble place to a professorship in
largest relations:--From the building of cottages to the building of
great libraries and museums. This is the order of progression. I will
not say that any of these men did the best he could do at every step
of the way. Some did; some did not, probably. But what is to the
point, each did better than the place demanded. He more than earned
his wages, his salary, his pay. He had a surplus; he was a creditor.
His employers owed him more than they paid him. They found the best
way of paying him and keeping him was to advance him.

Such is the natural evolution of skill and power. The only legitimate
method of advancement is to make advancement necessary, inevitable, by
the simple law of achievement. The simple law of achievement depends
upon the law of increasing force, which is the law that personal force
grows through the use of personal force.

Hiram Stevens Maxim in the sketch of his life tells of his working in
Flynt's carriage factory at Abbot, Maine, when a boy of about fifteen.
From Flynt's at Abbot he went to Dexter, a large town, where he became
a foreman. He presently went to a threshing machine factory in
northern New York; thence to Fitchburg, Mass., where he obtained a
place in the engineering works of his uncle. In this factory he says
he could do more work than any other man save one. Thence he went to a
place in Boston; from Boston to New York, where he received high pay
as a draughtsman. While he was working in New York he conceived the
idea of making a gun which would load and fire itself by the energy
derived from the burning powder. From work in a little place in Maine,
Maxim, by doing each work the best possible, has made himself a larger
power.

Furthermore, these men represent goodfellowship. They embody
friendliness. The late Robert Lowe (Viscount Sherbrooke) was at one
time esteemed to be the equal of John Bright and of Gladstone in
oratory, and their superior in intellect. He died in 1892 unknown and
unlamented. He failed by reason of a lack of friendliness. Lowe was
once an examiner at Oxford. Into an oral examination which he was
conducting a friend came and asked how he was getting on.
"Excellently," replied Lowe, "five men flunked already and the sixth
is shaky." Ability without goodfellowship is usually ineffective; good
ability _plus_ good fellowship makes for great results.

In this atmosphere o