The Lesson Taught by Bleriot

The fact that a Frenchman, Bleriot, succeeded in crossing the channel in an aeroplane before that feat was accomplished by an Englishman would not of itself seem to justify the direful complainings of H. G. Wells concerning England's "slackness and unpreparedness," though it did give rise to the vigorous grumbling in which the English excel. And it goes further to evidence that the smug complacency with which many Englishmen regard their institutions is not shared by many progressive men who are almost as free to criticise themselves as their neighbors.

In itself it is not a matter of much moment that one nation goes ahead of another in breaking a sport record of accomplishing a feat of dexterity and skill. But as a general principle the nation that accomplishes things, whether in science or art, sport or serious affairs, exhibits an alertness and readiness which speak for progress and an appreciation of the demands of the century.

A few days ago Great Britain gave a naval, demonstration which has been pronounced the most imposing spectacle ever seen on the water. His Majesty of Russia was present and marveled at the grandeur of the spectacle. But His Majesty of Russia would not be accepted, perhaps, as an excellent judge of what constitutes a great navy.

Before the Boer war the British troops, in their parades and maneuvers, were considered invincible. Their weakness was ascertained only when they were subjected to real war in place of sham battles. Brilliant uniforms and clever drills are not the main things at the supreme tests. Likewise, imposing battleships accomplish little if the power is not in the men behind the guns.

Mr. Wells, who was in a princely scolding mood, made his best point when he found fault, not merely with a foreign evidence of superiority here and there, but with the general system of education which goes. along on old obsolete lines, and with calm indifference to the exactions of modernity. Spain fell from a pinnacle of greatness because it adhered to useless traditions. Germany conquered France because the genius of Bismarck kept pace with the march of the world. Indifference leads to decadence and decadence ends in ruin.

So there was a suitable text for Mr. Wells and for all Englishmen in the flight through the air which. landed a Frenchman on the cliffs of Dover. And in every little triumph of another country, a triumph which speaks for thought and study and perseverance, enterprise and progress, the question of advancement or of falling back presents itself to those who have not succeeded. The great principle often lies behind

the comparatively trifling achievement. The spirit of progress which manifests itself in small things will as surely be found not wanting in affairs of larger

moment.

Andrew Jackson

When a British commander haughtily ordered fourteen-year-old Andrew Jackson to black his boots, the reply flashed forth: "Sir, I am a prisoner of war, and demand to be treated as such!" and that spirit could not be subdued even by the Briton's saber, the marks of which young Jackson bore to his grave. Andrew Jackson's victories in war, and more bitter victories in politics, were won by a courage not spasmodic, but the natural and inevitable outgrowth of that youthful courage which defeated the brutality of the British commander. It would have been easy for young Andrew to have satisfied his conscience with the reflection that prudence or policy demanded acquiescence, but the word, "yield," wasn't in Andrew Jackson's dictionary, nor even the word "temporize."

The Educational Value of One's Business

The young man entering business will meet a far greater danger than the necessity of working for an unprogressive man. I refer to the temptation to slight his daily work in favor of some chimerical scheme of self-culture or advancement that will make him valueless to his employer. He should be taught that there is, in every worthy trade or profession, an element of usefulness that is in itself cultural and mentally unlifting. The man who dreams only of inner improvement, lacking outer expression, dwarfs his soul by idle speculation, until he is absolutely removed from any possibility of real growth. The educational value of one's business must be recognized. The necessity of a definite aim must be kept in view: The student should be taught the art or faculty of so adjusting himself to his business that his growth intellectually will be a normal thing, based firmly upon the facts.of his daily experience and naturally leading into that broad culture to which he should aspire. A scholarly idler is a protuberance, a fungus growth, an intellectual wart. He is worse than an ordinary idler because he brings discredit upon the very ideal to which he pretends to aspire.

A new law of the state of Washington makes it necessary for persons applying for a marriage license to submit physicians' certificates and affidavits showing that the parties are physically and mentally fit to bring healthy children into the world. It also makes it a penitentiary offense to give false information, or to perform a marriage in violation of the statute.

Self-Mastery

By Henry Frank

All phases of planetary life merge in the constituency of a human being.

Within the forest of his veins prowl raging beasts of prey the lion, panther, ourang-outang, leviathan, hyena, wolf.

Within his brain float betimes the plumaged birds. of sunlit climes, and songsters all athrill with tuneful melodies.

Here, too, venomed vipers and coiled serpents haunt, animate with vengeful impulse.

Here slimy lizards creep athwart the tombs of buried memories. Wolves with hungry howlings terrorize the soul; the savage hyena swings his reeking jaws and growls for richer food.

Within the passions of the breast the fox, with cunning and deceptive mien, glides furtively, where betimes the ponderous elephant plods with huge and massive hoof.

E'en the timid rabbit, with trembling lip and frightened glance scurries along the avenues of the blood, chased by cruel pursuers or mayhap, fascin-ating its admirers with winning manners.

Sometimes monstrous fishes plow the billowy breast, terrifying the surging passions, or glide with tantalizing grace among the moss-grown rocks of memory and scorn the baited hook that solace offers.

Thus is populated the animated blood of human veins. Here, through caverns dug by tireless arms of progress and achievement, rush the gurgling currents of opposing thoughts, sucked into hollow and mysterious depths of passion, or swirled in bewildering eddies of doubt and indecision.

Here course the torrents of agitation, and thunder the cataracts of revolution.

Here spreads the wide main of civilization, bearing on its bosom the ghostly commerce of the centuries, or cannon-bristling men-of-war, its foamy crests forever seething with human ambition, acquisition, aggrandizement.

In the theater of the heart, where boils and bubbles the blood of the race, is ever enacted and re-enacted the progressive history of humankind.

Each drop of blood is the ancestral home of beast, bird, savage, soldier, priest, poet, potentate, agitator, saint, hypocrite, reformer.

All the forces of the passing centuries center therein, clamoring for emphasis, rioting for supremacy.

As the blood is literally the seething caldron of the flesh, wherein all the chemic substances which compose it are fused and transmuted into vital energy, so each human being is the composite of all the physical, moral, mental and spiritual powers which, through the ages, have been incarnate in animate form, and found expression in momentary phases of individual existence.

As, within a grotto are found clear and limpid pools, reflecting the overhanging walls or snatches of intruding skies, so within the depths of every soul are seen reflected the immortal truths that age-long suffering and experience have evolved.

Here, too, are found swift streams gathering tributaries of vengeance against the multiplying crimes of

centuries.

Here, too, babbling brooks murmur to the plaintive shores the dirge of human suffering; echoing cascades thunder against injustice and rock-rooted wrongs; and plunging cataracts with contemptuous roar defy the walled and high-cliffed tyrannies of time. All this is Man, and more!

The whole of history is again and again lived over in the narrow span of each human life.

The story of the universe, indeed, is written again and again on the palimpsests of man's decaying cells. Complex crystal, moulded out of infinite solutions, man reflects all the colors that mingle in the firmament of universal life.

And, yet, though formed of infinite variety, he constitutes the perfect unit of a single life.

The merging of infinite lives in one life, and the conscious control of all these lives by the mastery of a single mind, is the crux of man's existence.

That we literally consist of infinite lives-infinitesimal replicas of animate forms long since expired; that within each of us a thousand voices struggle for expression and a million minds throb for utterance; and yet that individual consciousness is possible, and self-conquest the privilege of every human being, is at once the problem and promise of the race.

He who rises self-expressed from the surging ocean of life, like a crested wave overtopping the billowy surface a monument of self-achievement-an individualized force amid the multitudinous mass of energy-compasses the meaning of existence.

He who merely floats upon the surface or mingles with the fluid forces-dissolving in the universal solution of complex substances-un-egoistic, self-unrecognized, semi-conscious-misses the purpose of life, the climax of evolution.

Self-mastery consists in the conquest and control of contending energies.

Every human life initially is a wild wood peopled by savage beasts-charged with sinister elements.

As the pioneer of civilization must needs hunt and overpower the wild beasts that lurk upon its borders, so must every human being who would enter the realm of refinement, culture and self-conquest.

Only when every bestial instinct that lingers in the breast is so conquered and commanded that the mind as absolutely controls it as the tamer of wild beasts grips them in the flesh of his authority, has one mounted the throne of Self-Mastery.

To furnish the mind with beautiful thoughts is not sufficient. One in his dreams may view a vision of

tinues to dream that peace prevails and forgets to fight the day is lost.

To slay the raging beasts of anger, hatred, vengeance, retaliation, and their kin, is more difficult than the slaughter of lions and leopards in their native jungles.

The weapon by which they are best conquered is the bow of habit armed with the arrow of resolution. When the habit becomes well bent and firm it will send the arrow straight at the brow of every rising beast.

Each time the beast is pierced by the flying arrow the weaker it grows and soon will fall with mortal wound.

Courage, the freedom from fear, is as needful a quality of the moral Nimrod as the physical.

If knowing himself so well, in the light of such truth as science reveals, man but learns to fear himself and all the prowling beasts that menace him, he is still a savage unfit for progress.

Science has not caused man to cower, but by knowledge to rise on the plane of evolution.

Man know thyself, needs give no fear to any. That natively we are composed so much of devil, need not blind us to the angel still within. That now we know man was not first spirit and then flesh, first angel and then sinner, but arose from mud to man, need not discourage us.

The path of progress has been through aeons for all the race. We are "heirs of all the ages, foremost in the files of time." Each individual today profits by the failures and triumphs, the sufferings and sorrows of the age-unfolding race.

We have far less to triumph over than the apeman, half beast, half human, who antedated human history. Yet traces of him linger still, and our battle. is to wipe them all away from the table of our memory.

But let us not forget that by the power of habit we can conquer all. "The use almost can change the stamp of Nature.' We can indeed by right usage make ourselves anew and "master the devil and throw him out with wondrous potency."-Swastika.

Let no one presume to believe less in himself be cause others doubt. The less he believes, the more they will doubt.-The Optirist.

To prepare for a life of opulence absolutely full of the power that draws wealth, I must stand by the person I "AM."-Helen Wilras-Post.

Love is all. All is love. Love is good, but don't send out your love thought in bulk, send as much as can be accepted. Remember an overfed bird never can fly up into the air.-Old Japanese Maxim.

Courtesy In Business

The man who solicits your advertisement, the salesman who has samples to exhibit, the life-insurance agent whose hair-trigger tongue pleads eloquently for your family, even the seductive canvasser, who tries to inveigle you into buying a history of the world. in twenty-five volumes, can be listened to for a courtecus minute or two and politely dismissed without seriously clogging the wheels of business. Perhaps they may really have something worth while to offer. Above all, the tellers and the cashiers of every bank need a course in the art of gracious expression. Why should the depositor of money be regarded with frowning suspicion, and why should his mistake in indorsing checks wrong side up, or his failure to have his books balanced regularly, call forth shouts of correction instead of a few words of kindly instruction? After all, he is only ignorant or only forgetful. No dark scheme for defrauding the bank lurks behind his failure to follow the bank's rules. Courtesy is its own reward. It pays in personal satisfaction, in minimizing friction, in making friends, and in raising you in the eyes of your business associates. -Anonymous.

The Ideal City

What makes the city great and strong?
Not architect's graceful strength,
Not factories extended length,
But men who see the civic wrong
And give their lives to make it right
And turn its darkness into light.

What makes a city full of power?
Not wealth's display or titled fame,
Not fashion's loudly boasted claim,
But women rich in virtues dower,
Whose homes though humble still are great
Because of service to the State.

What makes a city men can love?
Not things that charm the outward sense,
Not gross display of opulence,
But right, the wrong cannot remove,
And truth that faces civic fraud
And smites it in the name of God.

This is a city that shall stand,
A light upon a nation's hill,

A voice that evil cannot still,

A. source of blessing to the land;
Its strength not brick, nor stone, nor wood,
But Justice, Love and Brotherhood.

-Exchange.

Every business has a head and a policy. The man or woman at the helm may be unconscious of the fact, the employees may pay no attento it, but just the same there is a moving spirit behind every successful business which the thoughtful employee should study and with which he should work in harmony-get in line.

If you will apply this principle to the different concerns with which you are familiar, you can easily trace the influence.

To the extent that you are able to understand this principle and profit thereby you will rise in the estimation of your employers earn money. This moving spirit may be the manager, the proprietor or some one who influences one or both.

The person who thinks he is something more than a machine should not stop until this vital matter is settled, until a thorough knowledge of "the policy of the house" is mastered. This "policy" is not always reflected in the advertising, because only the best advertising men pay much attention to such things. Those who do get the best results.

Orders Can't Express Policy

The orders to employees cannot fully express the policy, because the policy is a subtle, intangible influence which is hard to express in words, but its existence is none the less sure and absolute. Every employee can read or understand the general meaning of orders, oral or written, but it is only the exceptional person that can carry them out in harmony with the spirit of the house.

Many rules in different concerns are exactly the same, but their application and interpretation should be modified in accordance with an intelligent understanding of the general policy. The ability to discriminate, to know when to apply a rule, when to act in a given case in violation to a definite rule is just the qualification which is rewarded by pro

motion.

No set of rules can be broad enough to cover every situation. The employee who knows why rules are made and recognizes that they may be safely ignored under unusual conditions will receive the approval of his superior if they are worthy of the services of good people.

The ideal employee is one who performs his regular duties in a satisfactory manner and who can be relied upon to act wisely in case of an emergency, or when some unusual situation calls for discrimination, caution and courage. At such a time the employee who knows the "policy of the house" has a better chance than the automatic machine, whose thought

has not gone beyond rules, specified duties, and an intense desire to keep out of trouble. This is the distinguishing point between blind and intelligent

service.

can

Right here I fancy some friend may say: "Why don't the manager tell us all these things, and give us a chance? I never was told to use my judgment. True. It would be unwise for managers to make Jules and then tell employees that they break these rules. It is only the exceptional employee who could be trusted to use such discretion. The simple intimation that under certain conditions rules could be violated would lead to confusion and disaster simply because there are only a few out of the total who are sufficiently well informed to be intrusted with such responsibility.

We are now trying to mark the path which will lead to greater profit. Rest assured that it takes courage to break rules and also that such courage, born of an understanding of the plans of the house, will be appreciated, because it gives evidence of ability and understanding which can be trusted with greater responsibilities, which is only another name for more salary.

Beware of Misdirected Zeal

A word of caution is necessary. You must not confuse courageconfuse courage a desirable positive quality-with the negative forces of audacity and daring. The former is a definite quality founded on knowledge, self-sufficiency, poise, and dominion, while the latter is a blind "take a chance" spirit, misdirected zeal— the counterfeit of courage.

It is no discredit to any business organization that its policy is different from other concerns in its class. This world is made up of millions of people, and there are quite as many kinds of people as there are stores-probably more.

If you stop and analyze the reasons why you do business at a certain store you will find that there is a strong influence which is not on account of their goods or prices. Somehow you and I feel at home in certain places of business, while other institutions do not appeal to us.

This is a delicate influence which it is difficult to express in words, but which exists, is positive, and earns dividends for the house which possesses the largest number of favorable impressions.

be satisfied when they come, because they find in the house just the conditions which were reflected in the ads. Therefore there is little profit in ads which misrepresent, because they won't bring in the kind of buyers who will be satisfied when they come. Or the buyers will be disappointed, which is still worse. The clerk, in harmony with the policy of the house, will reflect that element in his service and thereby strengthen their position, both with customers and management.

Selling goods or doing any other work in a concern is a science. The first law of science is harmony. People will buy more goods and pay a higher price for them under harmonious conditions.

"A house divided against itself shall fall." The ideal business is one in which the management, goods, and service are all harmonious. Such a concern will not sell to everyone, but to the people who like its policy, who appreciate the atmosphere of the place. Such a house has a power over its customers which frequently has a larger money value than the entire stock, tools, and fixtures. This is good will.

First Duty, Get In Line

Every worthy concern has character-good will. Now, we will presume that you obtain a humble position in a certain establishment. Is it not plain that your first duty toward your employer and to yourself is to get in line? There is a pat saying, "Get in line or get out."

There always will be plenty of people to do up bundles, and say "they are 25 cents each" in a parrot voice, or add up a column of figures, typewrite some other person's dictation, or dust the shelves. But it is the person who can look behind the details of their work and get the inspiration and absorb the general direction of the "policy of the house" who will be asked to come up higher, who will be placed in a position where it can be said that they "represent the house"-a mighty inclusive and important affirmation.

Get back to the mines.

Get to the fountain head.

It's your business to know the policy of your house, and if you are wise you will not be misled by some associate, either above or below you in position. Keep your eyes open and ear to the ground. Read the firm's ads.

Question the Best Patrons Draw out their best customers. People who have done business with the firm for years. Find out why they like the house. Look for good and you will find it.

Every successful concern has a character all its

own.

What is it?

you, but some are too busy finding fault and feeling the sore spots of "bad luck" or "no chance to get on" ever to find them. These chances, like salvation, are "free," but if you depend on any one else you'll fail, Work out your own salvation.'

Commence tomorrow-Monday. In a week you will be surprised to know how much you have learned. In a month you should notice signs of growth-more understanding.

The place to begin is right where you are. Your horizon will expand as you advance.

Some day, while intelligently doing your full duty and a little more-working with the current of affairs and in harmony with the policy of the house, you will be noticed, appreciated, promoted.-Chicago Tribune.

The Hundred-Point Man

A hundred-point man is one who is true to every trust; who keeps his word; who is loyal to the firm that employs him; who does not listen for insults nor look for slights; who carries a civil tongue in his head; who is polite to strangers without being fresh; who is considerate towards servants; who is moderate in his eating and drinking; who is willing to learn; who is cautious and yet courageous.

Hundred-point men may vary much in ability, but this is always true-they are safe men to deal with, whether drivers of drays, motormen, clerks, cashiers, engineers or presidents of railroads.

The hundred-point man may not look just like all other men, or dress like them, or talk like them, but what he does is true to his own nature. He is himself. work than in

He is more interested in doing his what people will say about it. He does not con. sider the gallery. He acts his thought and thinks little of the act.

The hundred-point man looks after just one individual, and that is the man under his own hat; he is one who does not spend money until he earns it; who pays his way; who knows that nothing is ever given for nothing; who keeps his digits off other people's property. When he does not know what to say he says nothing, and when he does not know what to do, does not do it.-Philistine.

Luck