has made some foolish mistake or has failed to use
good sense and good judgment in any transaction, when he feels that his
stamina and ambition are deteriorating, he goes off alone to the
country, to the woods if possible, and has a good heart-to-heart talk
with himself something after this fashion:

"Now young man, you need a good talking-to, a bracing-up all along the
line. You are going stale, your standards are dropping, your ideals
are getting dull, and the worst of it all is that when you do a poor
job, or are careless about your dress and indifferent in your manner,
you do not feel as troubled as you used to. You are not making good.
This lethargy, this inertia, this indifference will seriously cripple
your career if you're not very careful. You are letting a lot of good
chances slip by you, because you are not as progressive and up-to-date
as you ought to be.

"In short, you are becoming lazy. You like to take things easy.
Nobody ever amounts to much who lets his energies flag, his standards
droop and his ambition ooze out. Now, I am going to keep right after
you, young man, until you are doing yourself justice. This
take-it-easy sort of policy will never land you at the goal you started
for. You will have to watch yourself very closely or you will be left
behind.

"You are capable of something much better than what you are doing. You
must start out to-day with a firm resolution to make the returns from
your work greater to-night than ever before. You must make this a
red-letter day. Bestir yourself; get the cobwebs out of your head;
brush off the brain ash. Think, think, think to some purpose! Do not
mull and mope like this. You are only half-alive, man; get a move on
you!"

This young man says that every morning when he finds his standards are
down and he feels lazy and indifferent he "hauls himself over the
coals," as he calls it, in order to force himself up to a higher
standard and put himself in tune for the day. It is the very first
thing he attends to.

He forces himself to do the most disagreeable tasks first, and does not
allow himself to skip hard problems. "Now, don't be a coward," he says
to himself. "If others have done this, you can do it."

By years of stern discipline of this kind he has done wonders with
himself. He began as a poor boy living in the slums of New York with
no one to take an interest in him, encourage or push him. Though he
had little opportunity for sch