_Value of True Merit._--But the saddest thing is to see a man get sore at heart and quit trying because he thinks that his merit is not recognized. Make the merit big enough, and it is sure to win. Someone will find it out, and buy your superior services. Ralph Parlette well explains this in his so human pamphlet, "It's Up to You," in which he illustrates human experience by what happens when you shake a jar containing a mixture of beans and nuts: The little beans rattle down, the smallest to the very bottom, and the larger nuts shake up, the largest to the very top. Thus we find our place and hold it in life's struggle according not to our wishes but to our actual size. Friendly influence may elevate the little bean to high position, but the jolts of experience soon rattle him back to the place he fits without rattling; adversity may have crowded the big nut to the bottom, but the same jolts will see him shaking up again to the top. It is not luck that takes one up or down, it is size--and the answer to ambition is _grow bigger_. There is so much true human nature in them that a few sentences are quoted: "Everybody wants to go up. But everybody is not willing to pay the price by first growing bigger so that he can shake higher. So many want to be boosted up. Everybody is doing one of three things: holding his place, rattling down, or shaking up. Whatever place we shake into, if we want to hold our place, we must hold our size. We must fill the place, for if we shrink up smaller than the place, we rattle. Nobody can stay long where he rattles. And you observe that in order to hold our size, we must keep on growing enough to supply the loss by evaporation. Evaporation is going on all the time, in lives as well as in liquids. A plum becomes a prune by evaporation. I wish human plums became as valuable when they become prunes." _Joy of Accomplishment._--Akin to man's natural delight in doing things well is the motive for accomplishment, and the pleasure he gets from seeing a thing completed. We all know people who are more or less ruled by this passion, who "get their teeth set" as we say in doing something, and can be interested in nothing else until they have done it. One of America's most successful business men recently replied when asked what he considered the best thing in life, "The satisfaction that comes from accomplishment." This may be enjoyed by every individual no matter in what walk of life, for it means the satisfaction to be had from the accomplishment of the tasks in our own daily life and work. The housewife has it from the contemplation of her glistening shelf of preserves, the farmer gets it from his crops and the schoolboy from his work and play--when he completes a set task, or first swims across the river.