Make good! Don’t explain! Do the thing you are expected to do! Don’t waste time in giving reasons why you didn’t, or couldn’t, or wouldn’t, or shouldn’t!  
If I hire you to cook for me I expect my chops and baked potatoes on time, done to a turn and appetizing; I am not interested in the butcher’s mistake, nor the stove’s defect, nor in the misery in your left arm. I want food, not explanations. You can’t eat explanations.
 
If I hire you to take care of my automobile, or factory, or shirtwaist counter, I do not want to hear why things are half-done; I want results.
 
So also if you come to me and hire me to 77 do a job of writing by the fifteenth of the month, you do not want me to show up on that day with a moving-picture story describing how I couldn’t do what I was paid for. You want the writing, and you want it first class, all wool and a yard wide.
 
This is cold, cruel, heartless talk. It is—to all second-raters and shirkers. But to real men it is a joy and gladness. They rejoice to make good themselves, they expect others to make good, and they like to hea............