Herbert Spencer has shown that grace of movement consists in the economy of effort, in doing every act with the least possible waste of power. The same thought is the basis of the teaching of the great Delsarte. As Ruskin says: “Is not the evidence of ease on the very front of all the greatest works in existence? Do they not say plainly to us, not ‘there has been a great effort here,’ but ‘there has been a great power here’? It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognize in all things; and this is just what we now never recognize, but think that we shall do great things by the help of iron bars and perspiration. Alas! we shall do nothing that way, but lose some pounds of our own weight.” The best way to attain anything is to move towards it with the least possible jarring or friction. In every struggle we lose force, because we are sure to make unnecessary motions. Men do not learn this from their daily work as unconsciously as they once did, because machinery has so largely displaced handwork. But, even in using machinery, he is the best workman who has learned to run his machine and get good results with the least expenditure of physical effort. Such a workman remains fresh for a longer period, and accomplishes more in a given time. The machine itself is constructed upon the principle of saving effort—it cuts out all unnecessary motion and reduces friction as much as possible. If you watch a skilled typesetter at his case, you will find that apparently he is never in a rush. The beginner, especially if he is one of the more nervous type, looks anxious, pauses with hand fluttering above the case while he considers in which box he will find the letter he seeks; then, when he has made a decision, he will pounce upon it and deposit it in the stick with breathless haste. Not so the seasoned compositor. There is no haste, no fluttering, no waste motion. His hand goes unerringly to the box where he will find the letter he wants, in a twinkling it is in place in the stick, and another letter disposed of in the same way, and you are scarcely conscious of motion. The perfect workman is he who has learned to accomplish most with the least expenditure of effort. It is toward this perfection that Frederick W. Taylor and others are striving in the new “Business Efficiency.” Every day we are surprised to learn that what _we_ gained by hard struggle has been gained with scarcely an effort by another. It does not always make us happy to learn it. We often feel as if we had been tricked, and we think that effort spent in what we now see was not the most effective way, was wasted. This leads us sometimes to persist in a mistaken course, because we are unwilling to believe that we have lost so much time and missed so much result. But no effort is ever wasted: it is only by the effort to do well that we can learn to do better.