e such a
fool as this shoemaker) to improve on another's production. When some
genius brings out a machine over the plans of which he has spent half an
anxious lifetime, a dozen copyists will in a year have out a dozen
"improved machines," each of them better than the first one, and
therefore each helping to ruin the inventor. He had all the labour and
all the knowledge. All the others did was to add a few slight
improvements, for which they get all the credit due to the man without
whom they would not have had an idea. This is, alas! very common, and
cannot be avoided.

You can't make a law against one boy imitating another, or even against
his stepping into the credit due to you.

It is as easy to be unoriginal as it is hard at times to be original.
Everybody falls into the fault more or less. Why is it we can never
find anything to begin a conversation with except the weather?
Somebody, I suppose, began on that topic once. Why is it we always wear
the shaped coats that everybody else does? Somebody must have
astonished the world by setting the fashion in the first instance.

There is a touch of envy in Ebenezer, I'm afraid; but the kindest way of
accounting for his annoying ways is to believe he is not clever. No
more he is. If he were, he would at least see how ridiculous he
sometimes makes himself. The original boys, on the other hand, _are_
clever, and they are quick in their ideas, which Ebenezer is not. The
great thing in originality is to have your idea out before any one else.
As long as it's in your head and no one knows of it, you are no better
off than the unoriginal many; but give your idea a shape and a name, and
you are one of the original few. And the glory of being one of them is
that you are sure to have one or two of Ebenezer's sort at your tail!

Unoriginality is more a failing than a crime. Sometimes it may lead to
actions which do real injury to another, but injury is rarely intended.
It is stupidity more than anything else. But there is a point at which
unoriginality may become a sin. Every boy has in him the power to say
"Yes" or "No," and he has also the conscience in him which tells him
when he ought to say the one or the other. Now, when every one is
saying "Yes" to a thing about which your conscience demands that you
shall say "No," it becomes your positive duty for once in your life to
be original, and say it.

After all, most of us are medium sort of fellows. We are n