LOVE YOUR WORK | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 2, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 46.

LOVE YOUR WORK.

MARGARET SIDNEY has such an excellent piece of advice for boys and girls, in one of her stories, that I must repeat it at once:—

The first thing that you must do in order to be successful in anything—love your work. "But I don't," you say. Well, then, make yourself. Get up, in some way, a hearty, genuine enthusiasm for whatever you are to begin. If you are to study French, make up your mind that you'll be the best French scholar that you can think of. Be glad of any chance to study it that you can invent. Imagine how you would feel if someone took away from you every French book and locked it up; if there were a law that no one should be allowed to learn it. All the day, when you are not studying it, think of it pleasantly; watch every bit of improvement you make jealously; above all, keep track of the little slippings back in your progress. And then see what others are accomplishing in the same line. There is nothing so stimulating as this. You will be surprised now to find at this stage of your progress how many delightful avenues are opened up to you. Little clubs will want you, where the other boys and girls desire to learn, at the same time that they have a nice, jolly time. Somebody may give you a splendid invitation to go to Europe, somebody who would much prefer to pay their nephew, or their little friend, than a stranger, for saving them the trouble of scraping up all their forgotten French at the last moment. Oh, it soon becomes a fine thing to work, and moil, and study, when one sees the results of their labor.

It is just so in music, in painting, in learning arithmetic, or in taking care of a garden. Whatever you are doing, make yourself love it to begin with. By and by you will love it because you can't help yourself.—Selected.