r rarely, if ever, turned toward business,
except as said before, when it dealt with underpaid services. In the
spring and summer it was invariably of baseball, and scores of young men
knew the batting averages of the different players and the standing of
the clubs with far greater accuracy than they knew the standing or the
discounts of the customers of their employers. In the winter the talk
was all of dancing, boxing, or plays.

It soon became evident to Bok why scarcely five out of every hundred of
the young men whom he knew made any business progress. They were not
interested; it was a case of a day's work and a day's pay; it was not a
question of how much one could do but how little one could get away
with. The thought of how well one might do a given thing never seemed to
occur to the average mind.

"Oh, what do you care?" was the favorite expression. "The boss won't
notice it if you break your back over his work; you won't get any more
pay."

And there the subject was dismissed, and thoroughly dismissed, too.

Eventually, then, Bok learned that the path that led to success was wide
open: the competition was negligible. There was no jostling. In fact,
travel on it was just a trifle lonely. One's fellow-travellers were
excellent company, but they were few! It was one of Edward Bok's
greatest surprises, but it was also one of his greatest stimulants. To
go where others could not go, or were loath to go, where at least they
were not, had a tang that savored of the freshest kind of adventure. And
the way was so simple, so much simpler, in fact, than its avoidance,
which called for so much argument, explanation, and discussion. One had
merely to do all that one could do, a little more than one was asked or
expected to do, and immediately one's head rose above the crowd and one
was in an employer's eye--where it is always so satisfying for an
employee to be! And as so few heads lifted themselves above the many,
there was never any danger that they would not be seen.

Of course, Edward Bok had to prove to himself that his conception of
conditions was right. He felt instinctively that it was, however, and
with this stimulus he bucked the line hard. When others played, he
worked, fully convinced that his play-time would come later. Where
others shirked, he assumed. Where others lagged, he accelerated his
pace. Where others were indifferent to things around them, he observed
and put away the results for possible use l