. And to every young man the thought of it gives inspiration
to follow in the steps of the founder who "made it the rule of his life
to study not how little he could do, but how much."

V

ABUSING THE WILL TO WORK

There are times when the real test of a worker's courage is not his
readiness to work but his will to curb the temptation to be intemperate
in work.

When the word "intemperance" is mentioned most people think at once of
strong drink; many people are unwilling to think of anything but strong
drink. As if where there is no temptation to drink there can be no
temptation to intemperance!

Paul had a different idea. When he wrote to the Corinthians, "Every man
that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things," he must have
had in mind scores of different ways in which intemperance endangers
success.

If people were to make a list of some of the aspects of intemperance
that are characteristic of modern life, it is quite likely that a large
proportion would omit one of the most serious of all--the intemperance
of the man who lives to work, who drives himself to work, who is never
happy unless he is working, who makes himself and others unhappy because
he labors too long, and too persistently, perhaps with the result that
his own promising career is wrecked and the industry of others is
interfered with seriously.

One of the most striking illustrations of intemperance in work is
supplied by the life of Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield,
Massachusetts, _Republican_, one of the famous editors of the generation
beginning a few years after the Civil War.

Mr. Bowles was but eighteen years old when he had his first warning that
his system could not stand the strain of the work to which a strong will
drove him. His mother used to set a rocking chair for him at the table
at meal-time, because, as she said, "Sam has so little time to rest."
But the rocking chair was empty for months, when a breakdown sent him
South for a long period of recuperation.

When he returned home he plunged into work with all his might. "He
worked late at night; vacations and holidays were unknown; of recreation
and general society he had almost nothing," his biographer says. For
years his office hours began before noon and continued until one or two
in the morning. Finally the strain became too great, and loss of sight
was feared. Still he forced himself to work, and the injury to his brain
was begun that was later to