to promotion.

Many employees are looking for some great thing to happen that will
give them an opportunity to show their mettle. "What can there be,"
they say to themselves, "in this dry routine, in doing these common,
ordinary things, to help me along?" But it is the youth who sees a
great opportunity hidden in just these simple services, who sees a very
uncommon chance in a common situation, a humble position, who gets on
in the world. It is doing things a little better than those about you
do them; being a little neater, a little quicker, a little more
accurate, a little more observant; it is ingenuity in finding new and
more progressive ways of doing old things; it is being a little more
polite, a little more obliging, a little more tactful, a little more
cheerful, optimistic, a little more energetic, helpful, than those
about you that attracts the attention of your employer and other
employers also.

Many a boy is marked for a higher position by his employer long before
he is aware of it himself. It may be months, or it may be a year
before the opening comes, but when it does come the one who has
appreciated the infinite difference between "good" and "better,"
between "fairly good" and "excellent," between what others call "good"
and the best that can be done, will be likely to get the place.

If there is that in your nature which demands the best and will take
nothing less; if you insist on keeping up your standards in everything
you do, you will achieve distinction in some line provided you have the
persistence and determination to follow your ideal.

But if you are satisfied with the cheap and shoddy, the botched and
slovenly, if you are not particular about quality in your work, or in
your environment, or in your personal habits, then you must expect to
take second place, to fall back to the rear of the procession.

People who have accomplished work worth while have had a very high
sense of the way to do things. They have not been content with
mediocrity. They have not confined themselves to the beaten tracks;
they have never been satisfied to do things just as others do them, but
always a little better. They always pushed things that came to their
hands a little higher up, a little farther on. It is this little
higher up, this little farther on, that counts in the quality of life's
work. It is the constant effort to be first-class in everything one
attempts that conquers the heights of excellenc