---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 12
number: 9
published: 1909-07
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "Details," *Improvement Era* 12, no. 9 (July 1909): 702.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1209unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera1209unse
start_page: 702
end_page: 702
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1909-07)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1209unse
  publication_year: 1909
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1909, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Details

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prised and strengthened by the revelation.                    As we trace each one
back, step by step, through the genealogy of circumstances,                             we
will    see how logical has been the course of our joy and success,
from sorrow and failure, and that what gives us most happiness
today is inextricably connected with what once caused us sorrow.
Many of the rivers of our greatest prosperity and growth have had
their source and their trickling increase into volume among the
dark,      gloomy recesses of our failure.
       There is no honest and true work, carried along with constant
and sincere purpose, that ever really fails.                      If it sometime seem

to be wasted effort, it will prove to us a new lesson of                      "how"      to
walk; the secret of our failures will prove to us the inspiration of
possible successes.          Man living with the highest aims, ever as best
he can, in continuous harmony with them,                     is   a success, no matter
what       statistics of failure a near-sighted              and half-blind world of
critics and commentators may lay at his door.

        High     ideals,    noble efforts will       make seeming           failures    but
trifles,     they need not dishearten us; they should prove sources of
new strength.              The rocky way may prove safer than the slippery
path of smoothness.               Birds cannot fly best with the wind but
against it; ships do not progress in calm,                  when the sails flap         idly
against the unstrained masts.
        The alchemy of Nature, superior to that of the Paracelsians
constantly transmutes the baser metals                     of failure into the         later
pure gold of higher success,                if    the mind of the worker be kept
true, constant and untiring                in    the service,      and he have that
sublime courage that defies fate to                  its    worst while he does his
best.
                                   [to be continued.]

                                      DETAILS.

       Dreams, after all, are the heritage of ten, where ability to master homely de-
tails is   the talent of one.
       But   this talent for detail about which we hear     so much,   is   one of the few
"talents" that may be acquired.        I   have no patience with one who fails because
he has not this talent.