How It Is Done | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 28, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 33.

How It Is Done.

"Yes, it's very well for the minister to talk about ennobling every-day work. But I would like to see him ennobling my work," said a dry-goods clerk to his employer, with whom he was dining by a special invitation.

"Why?" asked his employer, with a kindly smile. "Is your work so peculiar that you can't dignify it?"

"I don't complain, sir, of my work; but—well, you know what it is," answered the clerk, tempted to frankness by his employer's manner. "There I stand, day after day, selling spools of thread; there's nothing ennobling about that, is there, sir? I've tried to feel as the minister says we ought to feel, if we are doing any honest work. But the work is so small that it belittles me."

"Ah! I see," said his employer, kindly, as if he were talking to a younger brother. "You have not yet discovered the secret of getting much out of little. Look at my partner, honored and beloved by all who know him. And yet he began life in our very store, doing what, do you think? Why, selling pins! And he was discouraged, as you are, by what seemed the smallness of his work. Pins morning, noon, and night! That was all he had to sell at his counter.

"Well, he went to the store one morning, after hearing such a sermon as you heard, about taking our Christianity with us everywhere and putting it into every-day life. And he noticed what he might have noticed a hundred times before, that nearly all his customers were women, and that the majority of them were poor. He took to studying their faces, and thereby learned from the care-worn furrows, of their heroic self-denial, patience, suffering, and mother-love.

"Well, he was not a thoughtless young man, and he found a feeling of respect and real chivalry for women growing up in him. Later on he noticed what a large number of customers called for black mourning-pins, and that led him to think of his mother, who had been dead several years. That thought did him good, for she had been a Christian woman.

"Then, one day, he found among his customers a woman who had been cheated by a clerk at another store. And he resolved that he would try to restore her confidence in clerks, as a class, by honest dealing.

"He began to take a new and deeper interest in his own work. He made a point of being on hand punctually, and his customers found him always good-natured and obliging. In short, he so dignified pin-selling that one day his employers discovered that they had a clerk too valuable for that counter, and advanced him to a higher place, with an increase of salary. He dignified his new position as he had ennobled his old one.

"Ten years after he found himself in the position of confidential clerk, and to-day he is half-partner in the concern. All this good luck was the natural result of doing his best where he was.

"Don't make the mistake," the old merchant continued, "of saving your talents for a bigger place. Use all you have where you are. Fill the place you are in and you will grow too large for it. You can ennoble even the humblest, every-day work if you are determined to do your best where God has put you.

"Why, I know a poor, lame, half-witted creature who was obliged to stand in a close, hot room twelve hours a day, stitching harness. He had heard from some preacher that every-day work could be ennobled, but he had only a dim idea of the man's meaning.

"One day he looked out of his dirty window and saw a horse dashing madly by with a light carriage, in which was a woman and a child. A bold man leaped from the curb, caught the horse by the bridle, and was dragged along by the infuriated animal. But the bridle held, the horse was stopped, the mother and child were saved.

"The thought flashed through the mind of the poor leather-stitcher, 'Suppose the sewing on that bridle had been poorly done, with bad thread? Then the bridle might have broken, and the man, as well as those in the carriage, would have been injured. How do I know but what that sewing was some of my work?'

"Animated by that inspiring thought, he stitched away like a hero, determined to do his humble work well, for the sake of others. From that time on he ennobled his calling, as every one may do who has the spirit of the Master, whose life has made our lives worth living."

The clerk thought over this talk, and went to his store the next day with his eyes open, and a new resolution in his heart. He found the following statements to be true, and wondered that he had not discovered them before:

I can ennoble my business of selling spools of thread by first ennobling myself.
I can do this by exercising patience, honesty, industry, and faithfulness.
There is abundant opportunity in my place to use all the politeness and gentleness in my station of life.
In my relations with the other clerks near me I can indirectly ennoble my work.
I can find a use for almost every Christian grace I possess without going outside of my own work.

That clerk is still selling thread, but his employer has an eye on him. The after-dinner talk did the clerk so much good that he is capable of filling a higher place. And he will get it before long, if he continues to live up to his discovery, that life is worth living, providing we ennoble it, even when environed by small duties.—Southwestern Presbyterian.