4. Strive to do only a reasonable number of things, and do those things just as well as you can do them. The fewer they are, the better the execution of them is apt to be. Reduce your efforts to the realization of one great aim. So doing, you will be able to achieve results impossible to scattered efforts. “This one thing I do” was the dictum of one strong character. He did that thing, however, with all his might. 5. Cultivate decision. Valuable time and strength are often lost in deciding things too unimportant to justify the loss. Learn to think quickly and clearly. Arrive at conclusions promptly and accurately. Impulse and desire are secondary, while the sense of having done the right thing best satisfies in the end. 6. Make each effort bring you a little nearer to the goal. You will never have cause to complain of any day that has witnessed real progress. Do not try to cover the ground in a single dash, but push forward steadily and patiently. Be willing to wait much, to fail occasionally, and to toil always. At the end you will have something to show for each hour. The Story of the Red Cross (1917) The Red Cross Society is an international organization for the relief of the sick and wounded in any time of special distress. It has been of great service in times of peace, yet it is readily seen that its constitution makes it of particular service in time of war. Throughout its life, it has given good account of itself in every time of need. It bears the honorable distinction of being an agency which is designed to minister to the needs of the living. There are always plenty of praises for the dead, and enough tears are always shed over the graves heaped up by the bloody hand of war. It is more especially needful that there should be means of helping the living who still need it, and who are still able to appreciate it when it is given. The Red Cross is a ministry to life in the midst of the fields of death. It owes its origin to the efforts of Jean Henri Dunant, a Swiss author and philanthropist, whose whole life and fortune were both given to the service of mankind. Great movements must always be fathered by self-sacrificing spirits before they are finally taken upon the hearts of the people. It sometimes even happens that the name of the originator of a movement fails to cling to it in the days of its popularity and success. M. Dunant was present at the battle of Solferino on June 24, 1859. There he witnessed the suffering and need of the soldiers who fell wounded upon the field and realized the powerlessness of any nation to provide adequate hospital facilities in time of actual battle. After three years of meditation and discussion, Dunant wrote and published a book, in which he suggested the preparation of supplies and the training of nurses against the time of need, in order that the volume of distress might not be again so far beyond the power of any one to relieve it.