"Deferred Business."
The president of the Postal Telegraph Company, referring to a service then proposed admitting long telegrams at cheaper rates, provided they may be deferred to a time when the wires are not very busy, said emphatically:
"We are not a deferred company.
"We push our traffic through to destination within a few minutes from the time it is handed to us.
"We do not believe the public has any use for a deferred day service.
"A deferred day service would get mixed with our regular day service and would hamper and delay it.
"Fast service is what the public wants—not a deferred or slow service."
I know nothing about the particular point at issue, but I do know that that is good doctrine relative to the conduct of life.
What the world wants of all of us is decisive, immediate, and completed work,—the task of the minute done in the minute.
If we are deferred workers, the world has no use for us.
The world—our friends and employers—wants to know what it can depend upon. It will give more for steady, reliable service than for service far more brilliant but erratic.
A clean docket at the end of the day is one of the surest passports to honor and success.