“I guess you are about right, Jim; but my opinion is that few persons carry out the rule. There are certain things about which most people are superficial, however thorough they may be in others.”

“That may be true; I shall not dispute you there,” rejoined James; “and that is one reason why so many persons fail of success. They have no settled purpose to be thorough. Not long ago I read, in the life of Franklin, that he claimed, ‘thoroughness must be a principle of action.’ ”

“And that is why you sweep as well as you study?” interrupted the room-mate, in a complimentary tone.

“Yes, of course. And there is no reason why a person should not be as thorough in one thing as in another. I don’t think it is any harder to do work well than it is to half do it. I know that it is much harder to recite a lesson poorly than to recite it perfectly.”

“I found that out some time ago, to my mortification,” rejoined the room-mate, in a playful manner.“There is some fun in a perfect lesson, I confess, and a great amount of misery in a poor one.”

“It is precisely so with sweeping,” added James. “The sight of a half-swept floor would be an eyesore to me all the time. It would be all of a piece with a poor lesson.”

“I could go the half-swept floor best,” remarked the room-mate.

“I can go neither best,” retorted James, “since there is no need of it.”

James had told the trustees to try him at bell-ringing and sweeping two weeks. They did; and the trial was perfectly satisfactory. He was permanently installed in the position.

A person, now an esteemed clergyman, who acted in the same capacity six or eight years after James did, writes: “When I did janitor work, I had to ring a bell at five o’clock in the morning, and another at nine o’clock in the evening, and I think this had been an immemorial custom during school sessions. The work was quite laborious, and much depended upon the promptness and efficiency of the person who handled the bell-rope, as the morning had to be divided into equal portions, after a large slice had been taken out of it for the chapel exercises, which were always protracted to uncertain lengths. It was annoying, tedious work.”

A lady now living in the State of Illinois was a member of the school when James was inaugurated bell- ringer, and she writes: “When he first entered the Institute, he paid for his schooling by doing janitor’s work—sweeping the floor and ringing the bell. I can see him even now standing, in the morning, with his hand on the bell-rope, ready to give the signal calling teachers and scholars to engage in the duties of the day. As we passed by, entering the school-room, he had a cheerful word for every one. He was the most popular person in the Institute. He was always good-natured, fond of conversation, and very entertaining. He was witty and quick at repartee; but his jokes, though brilliant and striking, were always harmless, and he never would willingly hurt another’s feelings.”

The young reader should ponder the words, “most popular person in the Institute,”—and yet bell-ringer and sweeper! Doing the most menial work there was to do with the same cheerfulness and thoroughness that he would solve a problem in algebra! There is an important lesson in this fact for the young. They can afford to study it. The youth who becomes the most “popular” student in the institution, notwithstanding he rings the bell and sweeps the floors, must possess unusual qualities. Doubtless he made the office of bell-ringer and sweeper very respectable. We dare say that some students were willing to serve in that capacity thereafter who were not willing to serve before. Any necessary and useful employment is respectable; but many youths have not found it out. The students discovered the fact in the Eclectic Institute. They learned it of James. He dignified the humble offices that he filled. He did it by putting character into his work.