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Show AS TO PRhISING OF MEN One Man Who, Grown Older, Has Changed His Views on This Somewhat. "I used to think," said a man now older than he was, "that no man ought ever to be praised, that it was up to every man to do his duty and to work to the best of his ability without praise or coddling, but I think a little differently differ-ently about that now. I think now that occasionally when a man has done a good thing it does no harm to pat him on the back a little. "You have to use discrimination about this, I will admit. There are men who If you praise them, get a swelled head, throw out their chests and think they are the whole works and straightway begin to deteriorate or to require praise all the time, but there's an astonishing number of men of quite another sort. "I know lots of men who work not only faithfully but well, men devoted to duty who take a pride in what they do whatever It may be and who think f'that only, never looking for praise; but, like the rest of us, they are still human. And now suppose some day such a man pulls off a Job that Is really a little better than his daily good work? "Why, what I feel like doing and what I do now is to say to him, 'Billy, It was a good thing,' and I find it does no harm, but on the contrary I used to think that it was up to a man to do his duty and that if he didn't he was a poor sort, and as far as that's concerned I think that way now, but now I think a little praise now and then does no harm, and it may be for the man that gets It a source of very great comfort and pleasure." |