NO EXCUSE ALLOWED

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Dec 12, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 48.

NO EXCUSE ALLOWED.

A SUCCESSFUL business man told me there were two things which he learned when he was eighteen, which were ever afterwards of great use to him—namely, "Never to lose anything, and never to forget anything." An old lawyer sent him with an important paper, with certain instructions what to do with it.

"But," inquired the young man, "suppose that I should happen to lose it, what shall I do then?"

"You must not lose it," said the lawyer frowning.

"I don't mean to," said the young man; "but suppose I should happen to?"

"But I say you must not happen to. I shall make no provision for such an occurrence; you must not lose it."

This put a new train of thoughts into the young man's mind, and he found that

if he was determined to do a thing he could do it. He made such a provision against every contingency that he never lost anything. He found this equally true about forgetting. If a certain matter of importance was to be remembered, he pinned it down on his mind, fastened it there and made it stay. He used to say, "When a man tells me he forgot to do something, I tell him he might as well have said, 'I do not care enough about your business to take the trouble to think of it again.' I once had an intelligent young man in my employment who deemed it sufficient excuse for neglecting an important task to say, 'I forgot.' I told him that would not answer; if he was sufficiently interested, he would be careful to remember. It was because he did not care enough that he forgot. I drilled him with this truth. He worked for me three years, and during the last of the three he was utterly changed in this respect. He did not forget a thing. His forgetting, he found, was a lazy and careless habit of the mind, which he cured."—Selected.