CHAPTER XXXIV 
ON TAKING PAINS 
ENIUS has been described as “‘an infinite capacity for 
© taking pains.” While the definition seems to me almost 
the reverse of the truth—genius acting always with that 
ease which the mastery of a subject gives—there is no doubt that 
“ taking pains ” is a good substitute for genius. In any business the 
man who takes pains to do everything correctly, immediately and in 
order, is the man who is likely to succeed, and in no industry I know 
of is the genius of taking pains more likely to be productive than in 
poultry-farming. Indeed the more I see of it the more I am con- 
vinced that it is the infinite number of little things that count. 
If one does not take pains to perform the thousand and one 
small duties that fall to the lot of the poultry-keeper, success is 
likely to keep darkly in the background. One may succeed in 
poultry-farming in the heroic scale provided it is all organised to 
perfection, but that very organisation implies just that meticulous 
regard for taking pains that I have been insisting upon. Whether 
one takes up poultry merely as a pastime, or as a means of earning 
a livelihood, the same devotion must be shown to detail if one is to 
make it yield a profit. One may, of course, be prepared to pay 
for one’s hobby, and if poultry are kept simply for amusement the 
question of profit and loss may be disregarded, but on the assump- 
tion that poultry are to yield a return on the labour employed and 
the capital invested, the very small things claim our attention. 
As a matter of fact poultry-farming is made up of small things, 
and if one does not take infinite pains to do them, one had better 
not enter the business. After all, a grain of corn is a small thing— 
yet the seed of the world’s bread supply ; an egg is a small thing 
—yet the foundation of the farmer’s fortune ; a chicken is a small 
thing—yet the basis of a huge and ever-growing industry. 
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