by Elsie Lincoln Benedict
Available in 98 free installments
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¶ Nothing can rightly be called work which one does out of sheer preference. Work never made an actress and work never made a singer where innate talent for these arts was lacking. Nature, the true maker of every famous name, bestows ninety per cent and man, if he hustles, can provide the other very necessary ten. But his sense of humor if not his sense of justice should be sufficient to prevent his trying to rob the Almighty of His due.
¶ Every individual who is not feeble-minded can be a success at something in this big world. Every normal-minded individual is able to create, invent, improve, organize, build or market some of the myriads of things the world is crying for. But he will succeed at only those things in which his physiological and psychological mechanisms perform their functions easily and naturally.
¶ Man is, by inclination, very little of a worker. He is, first, a wanter?a bundle of instincts; second, a feeler?a bundle of emotions; last and least, he is a thinker. What real work he does is done not because he likes it but because it serves one of these first two bundles of instincts.
When the desire for leisure is stronger than the other urges, leisure wins. But in all ambitious men and women the desire for other things outweighs the leisure-urge.
¶ Now what is it that causes some to have ambition and others to lack it?
Your ambitions take the form determined by your predominating physiological system. For instance, in every great singer the Thoracic has been present either as the first or second element.
The effect of the physical upon our talents is no more marked anywhere than here. For it is his unusual lung power, his high chest, the sounding boards in his nose section and his superior vocal cords that make the real foundation of every singer's fame. These physiological conditions are found in extreme degree only in persons of thoracic tendencies.
It was the great lung-power of Caruso that made him a great singer. It was his remarkable heart-power that brought him through an illness in February, 1921, when every newspaper in the world carried on its front page the positive statement that he could not live another day. That he lived for six months afterward was due chiefly to his remarkable heart.
The nature resulting from a large heart and large lungs is one distinctly different from all others?in short, the Thoracic nature.
¶ The best dressed man and the best dressed woman in your town belong predominantly to this type. This is no accident. The Thoracics, being possessed of acute eye senses, are more sensitive to color and line than any other type. These are the foundations of "style" and artistic grooming.
¶ Being desirous of the approval of others and realizing that though clothes do not make the man they can unmake him, this type looks to his laurels on this point.
Because clothes determine the first impressions we make upon strangers and because that impression is difficult to change, clothes are of vast importance in this maze of human relationships.
The Thoracic is more sensitive to the attitude of others because their attitude is more vital to his self-expression. He senses from childhood the bearing that clothes have for or against him in the opinion of others and how they can aid him to express his personality.
¶ The Thoracic therefore often becomes "the glass of fashion and the mold of form." His consciousness of himself is so keen that, even when alone, he prefers those things in dress which are at once fine, fancy and fashionable.
Some types are indifferent to clothes, some ignorant of clothes and some defiant in their clothes but the Thoracic always has a keen sense of fitness in the matter of apparel.
¶ The distinctive dresser is one who essays the extremely fashionable, the "last moment" touch. He is always a step or two ahead of the times. His ties, handbags, handkerchiefs and stick pins are "up to the minute." Such a man or woman invariably has a large thoracic development and is well repaid by the public for his pains.
