applicable, expressing at times disappointment and pain, at other
times renewed effort, and finally the active phases of individual
thought and exertion.

The first serious problem with many of you will be to secure
satisfactory engagements. This problem cannot be illustrated by
parables. It needs, in general, patient, unremitting, and frequently
long continued effort. It may be that the fame of some of you, that
have already acquired the happy faculty of making yourselves
immediately useful, has already gone abroad and the coveted positions
been already assured. To be frank, we cannot promise you even a bed of
roses. We have in mind an instance where a superior authority in a
large business enterprise who had great respect, as he should have,
for the attainments of young gentlemen who have had the opportunities
of a technical education, deliberately ordered out a competent
mechanical engineer, familiar with the designs required in a large
repair shop, and sent in his place a young gentleman fresh from school
and flushed with hope, but who from the very nature of the case could
know little or nothing of his duties at that particular place. He was
practically alone in the drawing room, and did not know where to find
such drawings as were required, and candor requires it to be said that
he desired to ask many questions about those he did find. The
superintendent unfortunately had nothing to do with his appointment,
and rather resented it. So he did not trust any of his work, and the
new comer was obliged to learn his practical experience at that
establishment, where he was known as the mechanical engineer, by
having all his work done over by the pattern maker or others, under
the eye of the superintendent or master mechanic, and be subjected all
the time to the jealousies and annoyances incident to such a method of
introduction.