You can form good habits only through regular work. You can develop your faculties only through exercising them honestly and systematically. ---- MERELY WORKING "FAIRLY WELL" IS NOT ENOUGH. If you want to run a mile fast, you do not merely jog. You try every day to run the mile faster than you did the day before. If you want to learn to jump high, you strain your muscles and try over and over to do what you can't do. Ultimately you achieve it. Keep that in mind when you work. Remember that you must wind yourself up. The most watchful employer may discharge you. But he cannot wind you up. Be a self-winding machine, and keep yourself wound up. Your hardest effort may fail to achieve greatness. But honest work will at least make it impossible for you to be a failure. Train your brain, nerves and muscles to regular, steady, conscientious effort. Make up your mind that FOR YOUR OWN SAKE you will make every effort your best effort. You will soon find yourself a more successful, more self-respecting, abler man or woman. And here is an argument that should be more powerful with you than self-interest: Remember that the world needs honest, conscientious men and women, able to do good work themselves and to people the earth with children born of honest parents. Make up your mind to be one of the world's HONEST citizens. To improve the world begin by improving yourself. THE STEEPLE, MOVING LIKE THE HAND OF A CLOCK If you live in the suburbs you devote perhaps two hours each day to travel. Two hours per day means practically one-fifth of your active life. How many readers make any use of those two hours, and feel each day that they have been well spent? ---- Instead of being wasted, those hours should be among your best. Never mind if you are clinging to a strap because companies are licensed to exploit you. Never mind if you are tired and weary when the day is ended. The tired brain often thinks better than the fresh one. And man, so recently descended from the monkey who had to think while hanging head down, ought to have no trouble thinking as he hangs from his strap--head up. ---- Some in the cars play cards as they travel homeward. Others talk gossip, and tens of thousands waste too much time on this and other newspapers. Try this experiment: Make up your mind to devote your hours of travel to thinking. The brain, like the muscles, needs definite and well-planned exercise. It must be methodical and regular. There is no limit to its possible results. You would be glad to spend your two travelling hours in a gymnasium on wheels. Make of your homeward car a mental gymnasium. Each night or morning, take up some one line of thought and follow it to its end--or as far as your mind can take you. Learn to observe, to study, to reflect. Don't look at your fellow passengers as calves look at each other on the way to the slaughter house.