hink they can put any sort of poor, slipshod, half-done work
into their careers and get first-class products. They do not realize
that all great achievement has been characterized by extreme care,
infinite painstaking, even to the minutest detail. No youth can ever
hope to accomplish much who does not have thoroughness and accuracy
indelibly fixed in his life-habit. Slipshodness, inaccuracy, the habit
of half doing things, would ruin the career of a youth with a
Napoleon's mind.

If we were to examine a list of the men who have left their mark on the
world, we should find that, as a rule, it is not composed of those who
were brilliant in youth, or who gave great promise at the outset of
their careers, but rather of the plodding young men who, if they have
not dazzled by their brilliancy, have had the power of a day's work in
them, who could stay by a task until it was done, and well done; who
have had grit, persistence, common sense, and honesty.

The thorough boys are the boys that are heard from, and usually from
posts far higher up than those filled by the boys who were too "smart"
to be thorough. One such boy is Elihu Root, now United States Senator.
When he was a boy in the grammar school at Clinton, New York, he made
up his mind that anything he had to study he would keep at until he
mastered it. Although not considered one of the "bright" boys of the
school, his teacher soon found that when Elihu professed to know
anything he knew it through and through. He was fond of hard problems
requiring application and patience. Sometimes the other boys called
him a plodder, but Elihu would only smile pleasantly, for he knew what
he was about. On winter evenings, while the other boys were out
skating, Elihu frequently remained in his room with his arithmetic or
algebra. Mr. Root recently said that if his close application to
problems in his boyhood did nothing else for him, it made him careful
about jumping at conclusions. To every problem there was only one
answer, and patience was the price to be paid for it. Carrying the
principle of "doing everything to a finish" into the law, he became one
of the most noted members of the New York bar, intrusted with vast
interests, and then a member of the President's cabinet.

William Ellery Channing, the great New England divine, who in his youth
was hardly able to buy the clothes he needed, had a passion for
self-improvement. "I wanted to make the most of myself," he