The Boy Who Will Be in Demand

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 4, 1907

The Boy Who Will Be in Demand

ONE of the finest qualities in a workman is a disposition to do things that need to be done without being told. Young men working their way through college are invaluable if they have this quality. A tool is left out on the lawn; there is a rail off the fence; there is a window-pane gone somewhere. The boy who tends to these things because they need attending to, without specific directions, is the boy who, other things being equal, is going to be in demand when he gets out into the great world. It is the attention to little things, and the habit of observation, which sees what needs to be done, and then does it, which makes exceedingly useful men and women. There will always be a call to come up higher. It is in one sense a small thing to do these little things without orders, but it is the doing of them that makes great captains, great engineers, great artists, great architects, great workers in any department, and it is the absence of this quality that makes commonplace men and women, who will always have to live under the dominion of petty orders, men and women who do nothing unless they are told to do it. It is this quality which makes volunteers in church work, and the invaluable men

and women who do not have to be stood over. They are the joy of the pastor's heart; they are the persons who do not have to be watched.—Selected.