Have you not sometimes seen a business manager whose stiffness would serve as “a good example to a poker?” He acts toward his employees as the father of Frederick the Great did toward his subjects, caning them on the streets, and shouting, “I wish to be loved and not feared.”  “Growl, Spitfire and Brothers,” says Talmage, “wonder why they fail, while Messrs. Merriman and Warmheart succeed.”

There is no investment a business man can make that will pay him a greater per cent, than patience and amiability.  Good humor will sell the most goods.

John Wanamaker’s clerks have been heard to say:  “We can work better for a week after a pleasant ‘Good morning’ from Mr. Wanamaker.”

This kindly disposition and cheerful manner, and a desire to create a pleasant feeling and diffuse good cheer among those who work for him, have had a great deal to do with the great merchant’s remarkable success.  On the other hand, a man who easily finds fault, and is never generous-spirited, who never commends the work of subordinates when he can do so justly, who is unwilling to brighten their hours, fails to secure the best of service.  “Why not try love’s way?” It will pay better, and be better.

A habit of cheerfulness, enabling one to transmute apparent misfortunes into real blessings, is a fortune to a young man or young woman just crossing the threshold of active life.  There is nothing but ill fortune in a habit of grumbling, which “requires no talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character.”  Grumbling only makes an employee more uncomfortable, and may cause his dismissal.  No one would or should wish to make him do grudgingly what so many others would be glad to do in a cheerful spirit.

If you dislike your position, complain to no one, least of all to your employer.  Fill the place as it was never filled before.  Crowd it to overflowing.  Make yourself more competent for it.  Show that you are abundantly worthy of better things.  Express yourself in this manner as freely as you please, for it is the only way that will count.

No one ever found the world quite as he would like it.  You will be sure to have burdens laid upon you that belong to other people, unless you are a shirk yourself; but don’t grumble.  If the work needs doing and you can do it, never mind about the other one who ought to have done it and didn’t; do it yourself.  Those workers who fill up the gaps, and smooth away the rough spots, and finish up the jobs that others leave undone,—­they are the true peacemakers, and worth a regiment of grumblers.

“Oh, what a sunny, winsome face she has!” said a Christian Endeavorer, in reporting of a clerk whom he saw in a Bay City store.  “The customers flocked about her like bees about a honey-bush in full bloom.”

Singingat your work.