Do It, and It Will Be Done
By Wellspring
“Oh, you have to ask leave of your memorandum pad!” Eleanor scoffed impatiently, as Ethel skipped upstairs to see whether the day’s engagements allowed of the all-afternoon frolic she was asked to join. “That memorandum pad has grown to be a sort of incarnate conscience, always pricking you, sleeping or waking, I do believe, with some suggestion of duties unperformed! Catch me ever making myself such a slave to one!” “Slave to nothing!” retorted her girl friend gayly, running down with light steps to say that she could go, and have a good time, and stay till after supper, if they liked, and come home by moonlight. “Oh, but I can’t!” said Eleanor, gloomily. “There’s a horrid history lesson I’ve got to do — tabulate all the kings and queens and straighten out the dynasties. You know Professor Forsyth hears us Monday, and he doesn’t look on failure with the least degree of allowance. Might have had it done and out of the way as well as not if I’d thought of wanting this evening for anything else. Got to use it for that. Can’t go. How did you manage it?” she added, curiously. “Oh, my memorandum pad!” answered Ethel, slyly. “I’ve printed a motto right across the top of it: ‘Do it, and it will be done,’ and I live up to it; that’s all. If I know of anything that has simply to be done, sometime or other, I just try to get it out of the way, if possible. It leaves me a lot of free time, first and last.” To many a hurried worker it would be a relief from slavery to follow Ethel’s example. A memorandum pad in itself has no magic in it. To commit one’s tasks to a piece of white paper is not to perform them. But a daily resolute living up to the program, checking off each task as it is dealt with, is a help to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.— Wellspring.