Nor is this all; the spirit of greatness finds ample play in daily duties. The success of the year does not depend on whether you can do things that shall amaze men to-day or make your name known forever, but upon whether into all the things you do, lowly, humdrum, commonplace as they may seem to be, the daily duties of home or shop or store, the care of the baby, or the running of a typewriter, there shall enter the great and high motive. This is what we all need, the high vision of the lowly things, the sight of the fact that the least piece of work is an essential part of the service of the whole universe, that a man serves the Divine not by wearing a black coat but by doing, as in God's name, with high motives the least duties that may be his. It is not place nor authority nor wage that makes the work high or low; it is the spirit of the service and the part it plays in the world's great business of perfecting humanity. Would you ward off old age, cherish vitality and give value to your days, seek the things that are above, the life that serves some worthy end. One is young as long as his heart leaps responsive to a noble call. But he who lives to pleasure, to the satisfaction of self, who has shut his eyes to the high things that call for self-denial, for toil and loss, is dead already. VIII Sources of Strength and Inspiration _Strength for the Daily Task_ _The Sense of the Infinite_ _The Great Inspiration_ _Living heartily is one secret of living happily._ _Life is early blighted if it knows no clouds._ _You can tell the character of any age by the place it gives to character._ _There is little danger in the discontent with conditions that is equalled by discontent with character._ _Heart health never comes so long as the hand is kept on the pulse._ _Feed on garbage and you soon lose faith in good things._ _The fruitful life seeks showers as well as sunshine._ _It's hard for a man who has ground of his nose on the money mill to smell a taint on anything._ _Many a man goes back by trying to put up a good front and nothing more._ _Every life is worth the love it gives._ VIII STRENGTH FOR THE DAILY TASK It is the dull grind and monotony of life that makes it so hard to bear for the ninety-nine per cent. of us. Sometimes it seems as though we spend all our days toiling, wearing strength, and hope, and heart away for no other end than to gain just bread and shelter so as to keep the machine in condition for further toil. How hopeless is the outlook of many a life! The mother with the weary round of home duties day after day, the father who goes to the same task year after year, seeing the same people, doing the same things, and coming home at the day's end with the same weariness, only augmented as age makes itself felt--all who toil feel at times these depressing limitations.