PROMPTITUDE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19905, 27 September 1926, Page 14

PROMPTITUDE.

GETTING ON WITH ONE’S JOH. The promptitude which divines quick paths through difficulties or past obstacles is a rare endowment. It is the gift of a Cffisar or a Napoleon, but not everybody's. Vet there is another kind of promptitude which almost anyone can acquire, and which makes an incalculable difference to ordinary lives. It ia simply the habit of doing at once whatever is the next thing to do, says the Daily Chronicle. It is common enough to acquire the opposite habit—that oi constantly ..m- .• to diversions of the • , ner* ting on with the job. How often docs one notice that ii.o-o e 1... rising in the morning arc the <_ wm bedtime, when it comes, finds amnessly 'e luctant to go to bed! The same process, repeating itself through the day, implies a perpetual rusting of time and missing of opportunities, and :s tantamount to a shortening of life. t’ro craetination only means protracting Hm fault from one day to another; and scarcely anything is mors i.itai m wi • success. Here or elsewhere the foundations oi a sound habit cannot be laid tpo ear.y “Children," says a sage old writer, ’ should be told to do nothing but what is reasonable; but they should be taught to do what they are told at once.” He adds, truly enough, that ‘the habit will stand them in stead all their lives."