Most of us are not going into Parliament, but most of us have to make our living. And no matter in what way we have to do it, whether by artisanship, business or professional career, vigour and robustness are essential to success.
An employer when about to engage a hand will most certainly give the preference to a candidate who looks strong and seems in good spirits. And this for more than mere consideration as to workmen’s compensation. For we have all learned to associate cheerfulness with ability. If a man undertakes a job as if he enjoys it, even if it is only a plumber mending a kitchen sink, we naturally conclude that he knows what he is about. If on the other hand he looks worried, we suspect that he has come across difficulties that he does not understand. If he seems to have no confidence in himself, we cease to have any confidence in him.
We are all more inclined to extend our patronage to a tradesman who serves with a beaming smile than to one who looks as if he would be thankful to see the last of us.
And in any avocation good health goes a long way by contributing that quiet contentment of mind which is a _sine qua non_ to the attainment of excellence.
It is a dictum in the medical profession that you can always tell the state of a surgeon’s digestion by the amount of confidence with which he makes his incisions.
The parson who enters the pulpit with an air of robust vigour is vastly better calculated to secure the attention of his hearers than one who crawls in looking as if he wished it were all over.
A man who is at the head of a large business awoke one morning feeling out of sorts. His breakfast disagreed with him, and he arrived at his destination in a state of irritability. Then he rapped out at his subordinates until he had flurried them to such an extent that they could not do their work properly. And of course after that everything else went wrong. When he was called on to come to a decision in regard to an important contract, he got the worst of the bargain simply through lack of a little tact. Yet ordinarily he was noted for powers of dealing, and for a judgment that was rarely at fault. That day he was the victim of his own stomach.
Want of stamina has deprived the world of some who might have done much to ease its woes and help its advancement. For it effectually limits the sphere of a man’s operations. There are some of conspicuous ability who have had to waste their talents in some quiet backwater, when had they but had the requisite amount of strength they might have occupied a prominent place in public affairs. Young men who have possessed every other fitting quality have been rejected for the missionary cause because their health was not good enough to stand the hardships of such a life.