"The busy world shoves angrily aside
The man who stands with arms akimbo set."

The world has but one duty to this man, namely, to dispel the cloud from
his vision and arouse him to worthy action.

To contend that the world owes every man a living would be as
preposterous as to assert that the government owes every citizen under the
flag a pension. The world owes no man anything except that for which he
pays a just equivalent. Every man is indebted to the world; he owes it all
his best possessions--his talent, time, and effort. And the individual who
attempts to throw off this yoke of duty is violating one of nature's great
laws. Even the lower forms of life afford example of this supreme law.
Solomon startles the sluggard with his sharp admonition to betake himself
to the ant. And Sir John Lubbock points men to the insect world to learn
real diligence and thrift.

Individual stagnation means public pollution. The man who arms himself
with a "rake," ever reaching out after something without giving an
equivalent, instead of championing the "hoe," determined to exercise his
faculties in the interests of humanity, becomes hostile to the noblest
sentiment and the highest aims of society; as in the case of the tramps
mentioned above who are a national menace, Idleness breeds vice. Industry
enhances the virtues. When a man ceases to work he retrogrades; he becomes
a stranger to lofty ideals and wholesome activities. The man with an
ambition ever finds himself in the ascendency; while he who deplores the
exercise of his powers, avoiding work as he would a powder magazine or a
pest, is in the descendency toward a state of groveling and low ideals.
And the difference between these two men marks the difference between
success and failure.