When you put a man of larger mental grasp in charge of a wearying round of monotonous details, you have mingled the elements out of which a cataclysm sometimes comes. These are the men who, with the very best intentions in the world, fail to appear with the horseshoe nail at the correct moment. To be there, at that time, with the horseshoe nail is their duty. Nothing greater than that is expected of them. Yet, because their minds grasp the great movements of armies in battles and campaigns, they overlook the horseshoe nail and, as the old poem says: "For the want of the nail, the shoe was lost; For the want of the shoe, the horse was lost; For the want of the horse, the rider was lost; For the want of the rider, the battle was lost; For the want of the battle, the kingdom was lost-- And all for the want of a horseshoe nail!" Perhaps the man who bore the title of rider ought to have been charged with the duty of being there with that horseshoe nail, and the man who was only a blacksmith's helper should have ridden the horse and saved the battle and the kingdom. INDICATIONS OF DETAIL AND NON-DETAIL APTITUDES It ought not to be difficult for any man or woman to know whether or not he or she is qualified for detail work. The man who enjoys detail and takes pleasure in order, system, accuracy, and exactitude, down to the last dot and hairline, ought to know that he is qualified for detail work and has no business trying to carry on or manage affairs in which there is a considerable element of risk as well as many variables. Strangely enough, however, many of them do not know this, and over and over again we find the detail man wearing himself into nervous prostration in the wrong vocation. On the other hand, the man who hates routine, grows restive under monotony, is impatient with painstaking accuracy and minute details, ought to know better than to make himself--or to allow himself to be made--responsible for them. And yet, nearly every day someone is coming to us with a complaint about the monotony of his job--how he hates its routine and how often he gets himself into trouble because he neglects or overlooks some little thing.