with the same obstinacy, insisted that his son go into business. The young
man was so passionately determined to make a career of music that he was
a complete failure in business and finally embezzled several thousand
dollars from his employer in the hope of making his escape to Europe and
securing a musical education. Here were two human lives of marked talent
as completely ruined and wasted as a well-intentioned but ignorant and
obstinate parent could accomplish that end.

A few years ago a young man was brought to us by his friends for advice.
He had been educated for the law and then inherited from his father a
considerable sum of money. Having no taste for the law and a repugnance
for anything like office work, he had never even attempted to begin
practice. Having nothing to do, he was becoming more and more dissipated,
and when we saw him first had lost confidence in himself and was utterly
discouraged. "I am useless in the world," he told us. "There is nothing I
can do." At our suggestion, he was finally encouraged to purchase land and
begin the scientific study and practice of horticulture. The last time we
saw him he was erect, ruddy, hard-muscled, and capable looking. Best of
all, his old, petulant, dissatisfied expression was gone. In its place was
the light of worthy achievement, success, and happiness. He told us there
were no finer fruit trees anywhere than his. Such incidents as this are
not rare--indeed, they are commonplace. We could recount them from our
records in great number. But every observant reader can supply many from
his own experience.

Thousands of young men and women are encouraged, every year, to enroll in
schools where they will spend time and money preparing themselves for
professions already overcrowded and for which a large majority of them
have no natural aptitudes. A prominent physician tells us that of the
forty-eight who were graduated from medical school with him, he considers