equal ability starting out for himself, who has
done just as little work for his salary as possible, and who has gone
on the principle that the more he could get out of an employer--the
more salary he could get with less effort--the shrewder, smarter man he
was.

The very reputation of the first young man is splendid credit. He is
backed up by the good opinion of everybody that knows him. People are
afraid of the other: they can not trust him. He beat his employer, why
should not he beat others? Everybody knows that he has not been honest
at heart with his employer, not loyal or true. He must work all the
harder to overcome the handicap of a bad reputation, a smirched record.

In other words, he is starting out in life with a heavy handicap,
which, if it does not drag him down to failure, will make his burden
infinitely greater, and success, even a purely commercial success, so
much the harder to attain.

There is nothing like a good, solid, substantial reputation, a clean
record, an untarnished past. It sticks to us through life, and is
always helping us. We find it waiting at the bank when we try to
borrow money, or at the jobber's when we ask for credit. It is always
backing us up and helping us in all sorts of ways.

Young men are sometimes surprised at their rapid advancement. They can
not understand it, because they do not realize the tremendous power of
a clean name, of a good reputation which is backing them.

I know a young man who came to New York, got a position in a publishing
house at fifteen dollars a week, and worked five years before he
received thirty-five dollars a week.

The other employees and his friends called him a fool for staying at
the office after hours and taking work home nights and holidays, for
such a small salary; but he told them that the opportunity was what he
was after, not the salary.

His work attracted the attention of a publisher who offered him sixty
dollars a week, and very soon advanced him to seventy-five; but he
carried with him to the new position the same habits of painstaking,
hard work, never thinking of the salary, but _regarding the opportunity
as everything_.

Employees sometimes think that they get no credit for trying to do more
than they are paid for; but here is an instance of a young man who
attracted the attention of others even outside of the firm he worked
for, just because he was trying to earn a great deal more than he was
paid for doing.