CHAPTER XVII.

ENAMORED OF ACCURACY

“Antonio Stradivari has an eye. That winces at false work and loves the truth."

Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty.- C. SIMMONS.

Genius is the infinite art of taking pains.- CARLYLE

There is no error in this book. - KORAN.

I hate a thing done by halves. If it be right, do it boldly; if it be wrong, leave it undone. -GILPIN.

Doing well depends upon doing completely. - PERSIAN PROVERB.

If I were a cobbler, it would be my pride The best of all cobblers to be; If I were a tinker, no tinker beside Should mend an old kettle like me.

OLD SONG.

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. - EMERSON.

Seize upon truth, where'er It is found, Amongst your friends, amongst your foes, On Christian or on heathen ground; The flower's divine where'er it grows.

WATTS.

SIR, it is a watch which I have made and regulated myself," said George Graham of London to a customer who asked how far he could depend upon its keeping correct time; “take it with you wherever you please. If after seven years you come back to see me, and can tell me there has been a difference of five minutes, I will return you your money." Seven years later the gentleman returned from India. "Sir," said he, "I bring you back your watch."

"I remember our conditions," said Graham. "Let me see the watch. Well, what do you complain of ? " "Why," said the man, " I have had it seven years, and there is a difference of more than five minutes."

"Indeed ! In that case I return you your money." “ I would not part with my watch," said the man, “ for ten times the sum I paid for it." “ And I would not break my word for any consideration," replied Graham; so he paid the money and took the watch, which he used as a regulator. He learned his trade of Tampion, the most exquisite mechanic in London, if not in the world, whose name on a timepiece was considered proof positive of its excellence. Character is power.

When a person once asked him to repair a watch upon which his name was fraudulently engraved, Tampion smashed it with a hammer, and handed the astonished customer one of his own masterpieces, saying, "Sir, here is a watch of my making."

Graham invented the "compensating mercury pendulum," the "dead escapement," and the “orrery," none of which has been much improved since. The clock which he made for Greenwich Observatory has been running one hundred and fifty years, yet it needs regulating but once in fifteen months. Tampion and Graham lie in Westminster Abbey, because of the accuracy of their work.

To insure safety, a navigator must know how far he is from the equator, north or south, and how far east or west of some known point, as Greenwich, Paris, or Washington. He could be sure of this knowledge when the sun is shining, if he could have an absolutely accurate timekeeper; but such a thing has not yet been made.

In the sixteenth century Spain offered a prize of a thousand crowns for the discovery of an approximately correct method of determining longitude. About two hundred years later the English government offered £5,000 for a chronometer by which a ship six months from home could get her longitude within sixty miles; £7,500 if within forty miles; £10,000 if within thirty miles; and in another clause £20,000 for correctness within thirty miles, a careless repetition. The watch,
makers of the world contested for the prizes, but 1761 came, and they had not been awarded. In that year John Harrison asked for a test of his chronometer. In a trip of one hundred and forty-seven days from Portsmouth to Jamaica and back, it varied less than two minutes, and only four seconds on the outward voyage In a round trip of one hundred and fifty-six days, to Barbados, the variation was only fifteen seconds. The £20,000 was paid to the man who had worked and experimented for forty years, and whose hand was as exquisitely delicate in its movement as the mechanism of his chronometer.

“Make me as good a hammer as you know how," said a carpenter to the blacksmith in a New York village before the first railroad was built; " “Six of us have come to work on the new church, and I've left mine at home." “As good a one as I know how ? " asked David Maydole, doubtfully, “but perhaps you don't want to pay for as good a one as I know how to make. Yes, I do," said the carpenter, “I want a good hammer."

It was indeed a good hammer that he received, the best, probably, that had ever been made. By means of a longer hole than usual, David had wedged the handle in its place so that the head could not fly off, a wonderful improvement in the eyes of the carpenter, who boasted of his prize to his companions. They all came to the shop next day, and each ordered just such a hammer. When the contractor saw the tools, he ordered two for himself, asking that they be made a little better than those for his men. "I can't make any better ones," said Maydole ; “ when I make a thing, I make it as well as I can, no matter whom it is for."

The storekeeper soon ordered two dozen, a supply unheard of in his previous business career. A New York dealer in tools came to the village to sell his wares, and bought all the storekeeper had, and left a standing order for all the blacksmith could make,

276 PUSHING TO THE FRONT.

David might have grown very wealthy by making goods of the standard already attained; but throughout, his long and successful life he never ceased to study still further to perfect his hammers in the minutest detail. They were usually sold without any warrant of excellence, the word "Maydole" stamped on the head being universally considered a guaranty of the best article the world could produce.

Character is power, and is the best advertisement in the world. "Yes," said he one day to the late James Parton, who told this story, "I have made hammers in this little village for twenty-eight years." "Well," replied the great historian, "by this time you ought to make a pretty good hammer."

"No, I can't," was the reply, "I can't make a pretty good hammer. I make the best hammer that's made. My only care is to make a perfect hammer. I make just as many as people want and no more, and I sell them at a fair price. If folks don't want to pay me what they're worth, they're welcome to buy cheaper ones somewhere else. My wants are few, and I'm ready any time to go back to my blacksmith's shop, where I worked forty years ago, before I thought of making hammers. Then I had a boy to blow my bellows, now I have one hundred and fifteen men. Do you see them over there watching the heads cook over the charcoal furnace, as your cook, if she knows what she is about, watches the chops broiling? Each of them is hammered out of a piece of iron, and is tempered under the inspection of. an experienced man. Every handle is seasoned three years, or until there is no shrink left in it. Once I thought I could use machinery in manufacturing them; now I know that a perfect tool can't be made by machinery, and every bit of the work is done by hand."

"In telling this little story," said Parton, "I have told thousands of stories. Take the word hammer out of it, and put glue in its place, and you have the history of Peter Cooper. By putting together words, you can make the true history of every great business in the world which has lasted thirty years"

“We have no secret," said Manager Daniel J. Morrill, of the Cambria Iron Works, employing seven thousand men at Johnston, Pa. " We always try to beat our last batch of rails. That is all the secret we've got, and we don't care who knows it."

“I don't try to see how cheap a machine I can produce, but how good a machine," said the late John C. Whitin of Northbridge, Mass:, to a customer who complained of the high price of some cotton machinery. Business men soon learned what this meant; and when there was occasion to advertise any machinery for sale, New England cotton manufacturers were accustomed to state the number of years it had been in use and add, as an all-sufficient guaranty of Northbridge products,' " Whitin make." Put character into your work : it pays.

"My whole ambition is to establish for myself, and to deserve, the reputation of a man of science," wrote Joseph Henry, when a young man. As a natural result of following his ambition in this way, Professor Joseph Henry could say years afterward, when his name was held in high honor in every department of science "The various offices of honor and responsibility which I hold, nine in number, have all been pressed upon me. I never occupied a position for which I have, of my own will and action, been made a candidate."

“Madam," said the sculptor H. K. Brown, as he admired a statue in alabaster made by a youth in his teens, "this boy has something in him." It was the figure of an Irishman who worked for the Ward family in Brooklyn years ago, and gave with minutest fidelity not merely the man's features and expression, but even the patches in his trousers, the rent in his coat, and the creases in his narrow brimmed stove pipe hat. Mr. Brown saw the statue at the house of a lady living at Newburg-on the-Hudson. Six years later he invited her brother, J. Q. A. Ward, to become a pupil in his studio. Today the name of Ward is that of the most prosperous of all American sculptors.

"Sculpture is the simplest thing in the world," said a rustic. “All you have to do is to take a big chunk of marble and a hammer and chisel, make up your mind what you are about to create, and then chip off all the marble you don't want."

"From whom did, the artist paint that head ?" asked a visitor of a "model" in a gallery. "From yours obediently, madam. I sit for the ‘ eads of all 'is 'oly men." "He must find you a very useful person ? " "Yes, madam, I order his frames, stretch his canvas, wash his brushes, set his palette, and mix his colors. All he's got to do is to shove 'em on."

"Paint me just as I am, warts and all," said Cromwell, to, the artist who had omitted a mole, thinking to please the great man.

"I can remember when you blacked my father's shoes," said one member of the House of Commons to another in the heat of debate. "True enough," was the prompt reply, “ but did I not black them well ? "

"It is easy to tell good indigo," said an old lady. “Just take a lump and put it into water, and if it is good, it will either sink or swim, I am not sure which but never mind, you can try it for yourself."

John B. Gough told of a colored preacher who, wishing his congregation to fresco 'the recess back of the pulpit, suddenly closed his Bible and said, "There, my bredren, de Gospel will not be dispensed with any more from dis pulpit till de collection am sufficient to fricassee dis abscess."

When troubled with deafness, Wellington consulted a celebrated physician, who put strong caustic into his ear, causing an inflammation which threatened his life. The doctor apologized, expressed great regrets, and said that the blunder would ruin him. "No," said Wellington, "I will never mention it." "But you will allow me to attend you, so people will not withdraw their confidence ? " " No," said the Iron Duke, " that would be lying."

“Suppose you had called to see Jenny Lind on a day when she was singing," said Mrs. Reeves; "she would probably come into the room with a bundle of music in her hand, put it on a chair and sit down upon it, talk away pleasantly enough for a few minutes, turn to a passage in one of the pieces and hum it over. Having satisfied herself of her correctness, she would replace it and sit down again as calmly as possible, and resume the conversation at the point it was broken off."

"I am reading over Macbeth," said Mrs. Siddons, when found musing over Shakespeare after she had left the stage; "and I am amazed to discover some new points in the character which I never found out in acting it."

"One language well learned," says Robert Waters, "is better than a smattering of twenty. For in the proper learning of one language you get a training of the mind, an increase of mental power, which is never gotten by smatterings.’

“Father," said a boy, "I saw an immense number of dogs-five hundred, I am sure-in our street, last night." "Surely not so many," said the father. Well, there were one hundred, I'm quite sure." "It could not be," said the father; "I don't think there are a hundred dogs in our village." “ Well, sir, it could not be less than ten: this I am quite certain of." "I will not believe you saw ten even," said the father; "for you spoke as confidently of seeing five hundred as of seeing this smaller number. You have contradicted yourself twice already, and now I cannot believe you." "Well, sir," said the disconcerted boy, “I saw at least our Dash and another one."

We condemn the boy for exaggerating in order to tell a wonderful story; but how much more truthful are they who "never saw it rain so before," or who call day after day the hottest of the summer or the coldest of the winter ?

There is nothing which all mankind venerate and admire so much as simple truth, exempt from artifice, duplicity, and design. It exhibits at once a strength of character and integrity of purpose in which all are willing to confide.

There are a thousand ways of lying. Ten lies are acted for every one spoken. Society is a lying organization. To say nice things merely to avoid giving offence; to keep silent rather than speak the truth; to equivocate, to evade, to dodge, to say what is expedient rather than what is truthful; to shirk the truth; to face both ways; to exaggerate; to seem to concur with another's opinions when you do not; to deceive by a glance of the eye, a nod of the head, a smile, a gesture; to lack sincerity; to assume to know or think or feel what you do not-all these are but various manifestations of hollowness and falsehood resulting from want of accuracy.

We find no lying, no inaccuracy, no slipshod business in nature. Roses blossom and crystals form with the same precision of tint and angle today as in Eden on the morning of creation. The rose in the queen's garden is not more beautiful, more fragrant, more exquisitely perfect, than that which blooms and blushes unheeded amid the fern-decked brush by the roadside, or in some far-off glen where no human eye ever sees it. The crystal found deep in the earth is constructed with the same fidelity as that formed above ground. Even the tiny snowflake whose destiny is to become an apparently insignificant, and a wholly unnoticed part of an enormous bank, assumes its shape of ethereal beauty as faithfully as if preparing for some grand exhibition. Planets rush with dizzy sweep through almost limitless courses, yet return to equinox or solstice at the appointed second, their very movement being "the uniform manifestation of the will of God."

The marvelous resources and growth of America have developed an unfortunate tendency to overstate, overdraw, and exaggerate. It seems strange that there should be so strong a temptation to exaggerate in a country where the truth is more wonderful than fiction. The positive is stronger than the superlative, but we ignore this fact in our speech. Indeed, it is really difficult to ascertain the exact truth in America.

Read the advertisements in our papers and magazines. No one believes half of them, yet enough is believed to bring fortunes to thousands who would starve if they told the unvarnished truth about their goods, patent medicines, and wares. How many American fortunes are built on misrepresentation, needlessly, for nothing else is half so strong as truth.

" Does the devil lie ? " was asked of Sir Thomas Browne. "No, for then even he could not exist." Truth is necessary to permanency.

In Siberia a traveler found men who could see the satellites of Jupiter with the naked eye. These men have made little advance in civilization, yet they are far superior to us in their accuracy of vision. It is a curious fact that not a single astronomical discovery of importance has been made through a large telescope, the men who have advanced our knowledge of that science the most, working with ordinary instruments backed by most accurately trained minds and eyes.

A double convex lens three feet in diameter is worth $60,000. Its adjustment is so delicate that the human hand is the only instrument thus far known suitable for giving the final polish, and one sweep of the hand more than is needed, Alvan Clark says, would impair the correctness of the glass. During the test of the great glass which he made for Russia, the workmen turned it a little with their hands. " Wait, boys, let it cool before making another trial," said Clark; "the poise is so delicate that the heat from your hands affects it." Mr. Clark's love of accuracy has made his name a synonym of exactness the world over. Character is power: put it into your work.

"No, I can't do it, it is impossible," said Webster, when pressed to speak on a question soon to come up, toward the close of a Congressional session. “I am so pressed with other duties that I haven't time to prepare myself to speak upon that theme." "Ah, but, Mr. Webster, you always speak well upon any subject. You never fail." "But that's the very reason," said the orator, "because I never allow myself to speak upon any subject without first making that subject thoroughly my own. I haven't time to do that in this instance. Hence I must refuse."

When Andrew Johnson, in a great speech at Washington, said that he had begun' his political career as an alderman, and had held office through all the branches of the legislature, a man in the audience shouted, “ From a tailor up." "Some gentleman says I have been a tailor," said the President; "that does not disconcert me in the least, for when I was a tailor, I had the reputation of being a good one, and making close fits. I was always punctual with my customers, and always did good work."

Rufus Choate would plead before a shoemaker justice of the peace, in a petty case, with all the fervor and careful attention to detail with which he addressed the United States Supreme Court.

"Whatever is right to do," said an eminent writer. "should be done with our best care, strength, and faithfulness of purpose; we have, no scales by which we can weigh our faithfulness to duties, or determine their relative importance in God's eyes. That which seems a trifle to us may be the secret spring which shall move the issues of life and death."

"There goes a man that has been in hell," the Florentines would say when Dante passed, so realistic seemed to them his description of the nether world.

Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, God help me !" exclaimed Luther at the Diet of Worms, facing his foes. Many a man has faced death rather than vary a hair's breadth from truth.

"There is only one real failure in life possible," said Canon Farrar; "and that is, not to be true to the best one knows."

"It is quite astonishing," Grove said of Beethoven, "to find the length of time during which some of the best known instrumental melodies remained in his thoughts till they were finally used, or the crude, vague, commonplace shape in which they were first written down. The more they are elaborated, the more fresh and spontaneous they become."

Leonardo da Vinci would walk across Milan to change a single tint or the slightest detail in his famous picture of the Last Supper. Napoleon, when sleepless, would examine the returns of his army, which he kept under his pillow. During an overture at the opera he would set himself such a problem as this: “ I have ten thousand men at Strasburg, fifteen thousand at Magdeburg, twenty thousand at Wurzburg. By what stages must they march so as to arrive at Ratisbon on three successive days ? "

“ Easy writing," said Sheridan, “ is commonly d-d (damned) hard reading." He wrote and rewrote most of his brilliant comedies, again and again. " Rolingbroke," said Swift, " would plod whole days and nights like the lowest clerk in his office." "Every line was then written twice over by Pope," said his publisher Dodsley, of manuscript brought to be copied “ I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent me some time afterward for the press with every line written twice over a second time." Gibbon wrote his memoir nine times, and the first chapters of his history eighteen times. Of one of his works Montesquieu said to a friend: " You will read it in a few hours, but I assure you it has cost me so much labor that it has whitened my hair." He had made it his study by day and his dream by night, the alpha and omega of his aims and objects. "He who does not write as well as he can on every occasion," said George Ripley, "will soon form the habit of not writing well on any occasion." Sir Isaac Newton said that whatever service he had rendered to humanity was not owing to any extraordinary sagacity he possessed, but solely to industry and patient thought. He wrote to Principia with great care. His great love of accuracy appears in all his works. Pascal wrote one of his provincial letters sixteen times. Buffon wrote his "Epoques de la Nature " eleven times before he was willing to have it published.

An accomplished entomologist thought he would perfect his knowledge by a few lessons under Professor Agassiz. The latter handed him a dead fish and told him to use his eyes. Two hours later he examined his new pupil, but soon remarked, " You haven't really looked at the fish yet. You'll have to try again." After a second examination he shook his head, saying, "You do not show that you can use your eyes." This roused the pupil to earnest effort, and he became so interested in things he had never noticed before that he did not see Agassiz when he came for the third examination. "That will do," said the great scientist. "I now see that you can use your eyes."

For many years Michael Angelo studied anatomy even more than the physicians of his day. He drew his figures in skeleton, added muscles, fat, and skin successively, and then draped them.

Reynolds said he could go on retouching a picture forever.

The captain of a Nantucket whaler told the man at the wheel to steer by the North Star, but was awakened towards morning by a request for another star to steer by, as they had “sailed by the other."

Stephen Girard was precision itself. He did not allow those in his employ to deviate in the slightest degree from his iron-clad orders. He believed that no great success is possible without the most rigid accuracy in everything. Although one of his captains had saved several thousand dollars by not buying a cargo of coffee as instructed, he discharged the man at once, saying, "You should have obeyed your orders if you had broken me."

He did not vary from a promise in the slightest degree. People knew that his word was not "pretty good," but absolutely good. He left nothing to chance. Every detail of business was calculated and planned to a nicety. He was as exact and precise even in the smallest trifles as Napoleon; yet his brother merchants attributed his superior success to good luck.

In 1805 Napoleon broke up the great camp he had formed on the shores of the English Channel, and gave orders for his mighty host to defile toward the Danube. Vast and various as were the projects fermenting in his brain, however, he did not content himself with giving the order, and leaving the elaboration of its details to his lieutenants. To details and minutiae which inferior captains would have deemed too microscopic for their notice, he gave such exhaustive attention that, before the bugle had sounded for the march, he had planned the exact route which every regiment was to follow, the exact day and hour it was to leave that station, as well as the precise moment when it was to reach its destination. These details, so thoroughly premeditated, were carried out to the letter, and the result or fruit of that memorable march was the victory of Austerlitz, which sealed the fate of Europe for ten years.

When a noted French preacher speaks in Notre Dame, the scholars of Paris throng the cathedral to hear his fascinating, eloquent, and polished discourses. This brilliant finish is the result of most patient work, as he delivers but five or six sermons a year. Dr. Wayland gave the thought of two years to his sermon on the moral dignity of missions.

When Sir Walter Scott visited a ruined castle about which he wished to write, he wrote in a notebook the separate names of the grasses and wild flowers growing near, saying that only by such means can a writer be natural.

Macaulay never allowed a sentence to stand until it was as good as he could make it.

Besides his scrapbooks, Garfield had a large case of some fifty pigeon-holes, labeled "Anecdotes," "Electoral Laws and Commissions," " French Spoliation," “General Politics," " Geneva Award," "Parliamentary Decisions," "Public Men," "State Politics," "Tariff," "The Press," "United States History," etc. ; every valuable hint he could get being preserved in the cold exactness of black and white. When he chose to make careful preparation on a subject, no other speaker could command so great an array of facts. Accurate people are methodical people, and method means character. "I know of only three Germans in the United States who have mastered English," says Robert Waters. "I mean Mr. Carl Schurz, the late Professor Schem, and John B. Stallo of Ohio; and of only one American who has Mastered German, Mr. Bayard Taylor. The rest are mere smatterers, who have learned just enough 'to get along;' and this is all they wanted to do."

"Am offered 10,000 bushels wheat on your account at $1.00. Shall I buy, or is it too high ?" Telegraphed a San Francisco merchant to one in Sacramento.

"No price too high," came back over the wire instead of "No. Price too high," as was intended. The omission of a point cost the Sacramento dealer $1,000: How many thousands have lost their wealth or lives, and how many frightful accidents have occurred through carelessness in sending messages!

"The accurate boy is always the favored one," said President Tuttle. "Those who employ men do not wish to be on the constant lookout, as though they were rogues or fools. If a carpenter must stand at his journeyman's elbow to be sure his work is right, or if a cashier must run over his bookkeeper's columns, he might as well do the work himself as employ another to do it in that way ; and it is very certain that the 'employer will get rid of such a blunderer as soon as he can."

Twenty things half done do not make one well done. "If you make a good pin," said a successful manufacturer, "you will earn more than if you make a bad steam-engine."

All bad work is lying. It is thoroughly dishonest. You pay for having work done well; if it is done badly and dishonestly, you are, robbed.

'Tis strange, but the masterpiece, a perfect man, is the result of such an extreme delicacy, that the most unobserved flaw in the boy will neutralize the most aspiring genius, and spoil the work.

" There are women," said Fields, "whose stitches always come out, and the buttons they sew on fly off on the mildest provocation; there are other women who use the same needle and thread, and you may tug away at their work on your coat, or waistcoat, and you can't start a button in a generation."

"Carelessness," "indifference," "slouchiness," "slip shod financiering," could be truthfully written over the graves of thousands who have failed in life. - How many clerks, cashiers, clergymen, editors, and
professors in colleges have lost position and prestige by carelessness and inaccuracy

" You would be the greatest man of your age, Grattan," said Curran, "if you would buy a few yards of red tape and tie up your bills and papers." Curran realized that methodical people are accurate as a rule, and successful.

Of method or system, Fuller says: "Marshal thy notions into a handsome method. One will carry twice more weight trussed and packed up in bundles, than when it lies untowardly flapping and hanging about his shoulders." -Cecil says: "Method is like packing things in a box: a good packer will get in half as much again as a bad one." Said Walter Scott: "When a regiment is under march, the rear is often thrown into confusion because the front does not move steadily and without interruption. It is the same thing with business. If that which is first in hand be not instantly, steadily, and regularly. dispatched, other things accumulate behind, till affairs begin to press all at once, and no human brain can stand the confusion."

Bergh tells of a man beginning business who opened and shut-his shop regularly at the same hour every day for weeks, without selling two cents' worth, yet whose application attracted attention and paved the way to fortune.

"He who every morning plans the transactions of the day," says Victor Hugo, "and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most, busy life. The orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of light which darts itself through all his occupations. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidents, all things lie huddled together in one chaos, which admits of neither distribution nor review."

A. T. Stewart was extremely systematic and precise in all his transactions. Method ruled in every department of his store, and for every delinquency a penalty was rigidly enforced. His eye was upon his business in all its ramifications; he mastered every detail and worked hard.

From the time Jonas Chickering began to work for a piano-maker, he was noted for the pains and care with which he did everything. To him there were no trifles in the manufacturing of pianos. Neither time nor labor was of any account to him, compared with accuracy and knowledge.

He soon made pianos in a factory of his own. He determined to make an instrument yielding the fullest and richest volume of melody with the least exertion to the player, withstanding atmospheric changes, and preserving its purity and truthfulness of tone. He resolved each piano should be an improvement upon the one which preceded it; perfection was his aim. To the end of his life he gave the finishing touch to each of his instruments, and would trust it to no one else. He permitted no irregularity in workmanship or sales, and was characterized by simplicity, transparency, and straightforwardness. He distanced all competitors. Chickering's name was such a power that one piano-maker had his name changed to Chickering by the Massachusetts legislature, and put it on his pianos; but Jonas Chickering sent a petition to the legislature, and the name was changed back. Character has a commercial as well as an ethical value.

Joseph M.W. Turner was intended by his father for a barber, but he showed such a taste for drawing that a reluctant permission was given for him to follow art as a profession. He soon became skillful, but as he lacked means he took anything to do that came in his way, frequently illustrating guidebooks and almanacs. But though the pay was very small the work was never careless. His work was worth several times what he received for it, but the price was increased and work of higher grade given him simply because men seek the services of those who are known to be faithful, and employ them in as lofty work as they seem able to do. And so he toiled upward until he began to employ himself, his work sure of a market at some price, and the price increasing as other men began to get glimpses of the transcendent art revealed in his paintings, an art not fully comprehended even in our day. He surpassed the acknowledged masters in various fields of landscape work, and left matchless studies of natural scenery in lines never before attempted. What Shakespeare is in literature, Turner is in his special field, the greatest name on record.

The demand for perfection in the nature of Wendell Phillips was wonderful. Every word must exactly express the shade of his thought; every phrase must be of due length and cadence ; every sentence must be perfectly balanced before it left his lips. Exact precision characterized his style. He was easily the first forensic orator America has produced. The rhythmical fullness and poise of his periods are remarkable.

Lord Brougham had such a love for excellence that no amount of labor seemed too great for him. No matter what he did, no one should do it better. To this one thing he owed his success.

Roger Sherman was the best shoemaker in town, and one of the best statesmen later in life. Franklin was noted for his thoroughness even when a printer.

Alexander Dumas prepared his manuscript with the greatest care. When consulted by a friend whose article had been rejected by several publishers, he advised him to have it handsomely copied by a professional penman, and then change the title. The advice was taken, and the article eagerly accepted by one of the very publishers who had refused it before. Many able essays have been rejected because of poor penmanship

One of the first articles which George H. Lewes sent to the "Edinburgh Review" was returned with a request to rearrange it throughout. Although greatly vexed, Lewes complied, and was so much pleased with the result that he never again sent a paper to the press until it had been rewritten from one to three times Macaulay wrote his best essays two or three times.

We must strive after accuracy as we would after wisdom, or hidden treasure, or anything we would attain. Determine to form exact business habits. Avoid slipshod financiering as you would the plague. Careless and indifferent habits would soon ruin a millionaire. Nearly every very successful man is accurate and painstaking. Accuracy means character, and character is power.