practically lost to the world. The experience of
Tom Potter, telegraph operator at an obscure little way station, is
truth painted large. That fearful night, when most of the wires were
down and a passenger train went through the bridge, gave Tom Potter the
opportunity of discovering himself. He took charge of the dead, cared
for the wounded, settled fifty claims--drawing drafts on the
company--burned the last vestige of the wreck, sunk the waste iron in
the river and repaired the bridge before the arrival of the
Superintendent on the spot.

"Who gave you the authority to do all this?" demanded the
Superintendent.

"Nobody," replied Tom, "I assumed the authority."

The next month Tom Potter's salary was five thousand dollars a year, and
in three years he was making ten times this, simply because he could get
other men to do things.

Why wait for an accident to discover Tom Potter? Let us set traps for
Tom Potter, and lie in wait for him. Perhaps Tom Potter is just around
the corner, across the street, in the next room, or at our elbow.
Myriads of embryonic Tom Potters await discovery and development if we
but look for them.

I know a man who roamed the woods and fields for thirty years and never
found an Indian arrow. One day he began to think "arrow," and stepping
out of his doorway he picked one up. Since then he has collected a
bushel of them.

Suppose we cease wailing about incompetence, sleepy indifference and
slipshod "help" that watches the clock. These things exist--let us
dispose of the subject by admitting it, and then emphasize the fact that
freckled farmer boys come out of the West and East and often go to the
front and do things in a masterly way. There is one name that stands out
in history like a beacon light after all these twenty-five hundred years
have passed, just because the man had the sublime genius of discovering
Ability. That man is Pericles. Pericles made Athens.

And to-day the very dust of the streets of Athens is being sifted and
searched for relics and remnants of the things made by people who were
captained by men of Ability who were discovered by Pericles.

There is very little competition in this line of discovering Ability. We
sit down and wail because Ability does not come our way. Let us think
"Ability," and possibly we can jostle Pericles there on his pedestal,
where he has stood for over a score of centuries--the man with a supreme
genius for recognizing Ability. Hail to th