THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



The 



Capacity 

 for Work. 



like the stage coach criticising the loco- 

 motive," 



There is nothing better rec- 

 ognized by business men than 

 the value of capacity for work. 

 Genius, they say, is all very well in its 

 way; but when it comes to executing large 

 plans, the men who can do the most and 

 do it to order are in demand. The master 

 of an extensive plant giving employment 

 to a great many laborers, skilled and un- 

 skilled, has his eye on details; he is never 

 deceived by the generalizer who makes a 

 great show without bringing much to pass. 

 Efficiency counts for more than knowledge 

 when knowledge has clumsy fingers and a 

 slow intelligence to carry it into operation. 

 It is the bullet that hits, the hammer- 

 stroke on the head of the nail, that must 

 be reckoned with in every calculation, in 

 war or in the workshop. And this accur- 

 acy of execution, although displayed by 

 persons not scientifically trained, will com- 

 mand the highest respect and reward of 

 practical employers. 



Doubtless the capacity for work is her- 

 editary in many cases; but breeding, even 

 here, means more than ancestry. In a 

 word, training from infancy in the details 

 of industry can work wonders with most 

 unpromising natures. ' 'What can y ou do ?' ' 

 is a greater question than "What do you 

 know?" Knowledge is theory; work is 

 practice. T/he professor of agriculture 

 would drive a crooked furrow and gain the 

 contempt of a real plowman guiltless of a 

 single "scientific" thought; he was bred to 

 capacity, this accurate plowman. Knowl- 

 edge truly is power when it has been di- 

 gested and assimilated so as to be a part of 

 the man, informing his faculties and vital- 

 izing his capacities to a state of special 

 efficiency. It does not have to beg for 

 respect. 



Nothing is more abused than education. 

 On the threshold of school we are too often 

 dazzled and misled by that will- 'o-the- wisp, 

 a nebulous and elusive ambition dancing 

 far off over the quagmires of imagination. 

 Many a youth has dreamed through col- 

 lege with his eyes on the Presidency of the 

 United States, and when it was too late 

 he found himself unfitted even for the 

 effico of Justice of the Peace 



Now and then a rail-splitter or a 

 canal-boat driver has picked up ample re- 

 sources for doing the work of Lincoln or 

 Garfield. "Know thyself" is a fine admon- 

 ition; but the capacity for work is the best 

 self-knowledge; it never misleads its- 

 possessor. 



If we could but discover early in life our 

 limitations, if we could apply the nutrition 

 of school training and home training to- 

 such of our faculties as nature has made 

 sound and capable of efficient development; 

 if we could but recognize the absolute and 

 unavoidable law of fitness and be satisfied 

 with the life we are fit for, there would 

 soon be a great lessening of the heaviest 

 and most galling strain of existence. The 

 capacity for work ought to suggest to its 

 possessor what particular work demands 

 his activity. If I am eminently fitted to 

 excel as a hedger and ditcher, my mental 

 training should not be directed so as to de- 

 stroy that fitness and lead me into the de- 

 lusive dream of peddling lightning-rods. 



This rule of native fitness, this criterion 

 of capacity, is perhaps, applied with less 

 judgment in the field of literary work than 

 in any other area of ambition. Every man 

 and woman who has reached any com- 

 manding eminence in letters has had to 

 bear the greatest strain of sympathy and 

 pity caused by constant contact with per- 

 sons who have persisted in throw- 

 ing their lives recklessly away trying 

 to do the impossible trying to find a 

 way by which lack of capacity could be 

 bridged over and success in literature at- 

 tained despite the most obvious unfitness 

 for literary work. It is a curious dream r 

 ravenously indulged in by many excellent 

 people, that the whole of literary success 

 depends upon getting their writings 

 printed. They assume that capacity ex- 

 ists; they assert that there is favoritism at 

 the publisher's counter; that a friend at 

 court can make matters all right with the 

 editors. No amount of reasoning on busi- 

 ness grounds, or from a basis of common 

 sense, can drive them from this destruct- 

 ive delusion. They do not know them- 

 selves; they mistake desire for capacity; 

 they go on from year to year aiming at 

 Scott, or Emerson, or Tennyson, and won- 

 dering in desperate wrath when their ef- 

 forts land far short of dime novel and dog- 

 gerel. Truly the capacity for work must 

 precede ambition .MAURICE THOMPSON^ 

 in tne Saturday Evening Post. 



