The egotist felt insulted.  He resigned his position, arrogantly declaring that he would not work for a house where results were so little appreciated.  He was cocksure of himself.  However, when he offered his services to a competing firm, his application was turned down.  The rebuff stunned him.  He did not realize that his egotism disgusted the second executive as much as the first.  The salesman’s spirit was broken.  He has never since been more than a fair peddler.

[Sidenote:  Giant and Pigmy Successes]

Think of “successful” men you know. Compare them as they are now with the men they used to be before they succeeded. As they rose did they loom bigger and bigger in your respect, or grow smaller and smaller in admirable qualities?  There are so-called successful men whose characters seem to be dwarfed by the mountain tops they attain.  Other men grow to be giants and overshadow any eminences they climb.  The littleness of the last Kaiser and Crown Prince of Germany was only emphasized by their elevation above the common people.  On the other hand the bigness of Lincoln and Roosevelt was so tremendous that their personalities towered above even the highest honor in the world.

[Sidenote:  Breaking Training]

When football players are fighting for the championship of the season, they are governed by rigid rules of living. They keep themselves fit by strict diet, by the avoidance of all dissipations, by hardening exercise, and by recuperative rest.  But after the “big game” is won, they break training.  They stuff themselves with rich food until their bodies and minds are sluggish.  Then they celebrate their victory by some sort of jollification that lasts half the night. The next day a second-rate team could beat the champions.

A man who has kept himself lean, hard-muscled, and healthy all the way to the achievement of his ambition is apt to take on flabby flesh and gout when he succeeds.  The celebration of Thanksgiving is an ordeal from which one does not recover for weeks.  Turkey and mince pie immoderately eaten are poisons.  Our annual Feast Day is more deadly than the Fourth of July.

[Sidenote:  Rusting in Self-Satisfaction]

A great many people “break training” mentally as well as physically at the celebration stage. Their minds and muscles turn flabby after they succeed.  They are so proud of their accomplishments that they rust in self-satisfaction. Then, usually too late for remedy, they find themselves afflicted by the rheumatic twinges of deep-seated discontent with what they have done.

We are all familiar with the tragedies of the farmer who sells his acres and moves into town “so that he can take life easy,” and of the business man who retires from his “daily grind” to enjoy the fortune of success.  So long as they remained at work they were vigorous in mind and body.  But nearly always men who give up their accustomed activities begin to develop mental and physical ailments soon afterward.  They age and break down in a few years. In order to stay well, one must keep going.  It is far less wearying to walk than to stand still.  Normal fatigue of mind and body are not so exhaustive of mental and physical energy as torpid idleness.