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 now I was too busy reassuring him by showing a steady, undistorted profile crowned by a neat, proud sweep of hair instead of the tear-darkened mask he always feared ever to have enough vitality left over to enjoy his presence. I spoke in a calm voice full from the chest, quite unfluted with agony; I read "Country Life" with ponderous interest; I kept my hands, which I desired to wring, in doe-skin gloves for most of the day; I played with the dogs a great deal and wore my thickest tweeds; I pretended that the slight heaviness of my features is a correct indication of my temperament. The only occasion when I could safely let the sense of him saturate me as it used was when I met Margaret in the hall as she came or went. She was very different now; she had a little smile in her eyes, as though she were listening to a familiar air played far away. Her awkwardness seemed indecision as to whether she should


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 lege life as much as he should. He is like the college boy who always goes home at week ends; his interests are divided, his heart is in two places, and he does justice to neither.

In his eagerness for a good time the boy, like his older brother at times, is rather careless in his choice of his girl associates. He chooses the girl who is a "good fellow," who is not too prudish and exacting in her insistence upon conventionalities, who is ready for any sort of lark, and who, while she is not in any sense of disreputable character, is at least careless and thoughtless and "easy" to get on with. She does not hold him to his best behavior or criticise him when he is careless in his talk or familiar in his manner. It is doubtful if such a relationship, and there are far too many of them, results in any more enjoyment to either of the persons concerned. It is quite certain that such a girl always loses the respect of the boy who takes advantage of her weakness and carelessness, neither derives any helpful social training from the relationship, and one of them at least loses something of idealism and cleanness of character.

I watched a cheap show unload at the railway station the other day. It had come to town for a nine-days run in the open air. There were following it all sorts of careless and disreputable women. The disheartening thing about it all was the rapidity with which these women picked up the young boys standing about. Most of these young fellows had no evil intentions, but the daring

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 and the adventure appealed to them. They thought it was good fun; it was something to joke about later. I wish I could make it clear that nothing stains a boy's character and lowers his ideals, nothing leaves so permanent a vulgar impression upon his mind as associating with women whose character is low. It leaves the stain that will not come off.

A boy who wants to get the greatest good and the greatest permanent satisfaction and happiness out of life will keep his social relationships on the highest possible plane. The girl who keeps him at a distance, who holds him to his best manners and his best behavior is giving him the best training and in reality the best time.


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I was looking through the book shelves the other day in search of a misplaced book which I was wanting, when I came upon a pretentious volume that took me back almost to the beginning of time for me. Gaskell's Compendium of Forms it was called, and a perusal of it was guaranteed to prepare one thoroughly for every line of endeavor, and for every emergency of life. The author was equally at home in science and in literature, in religion and in art, and in all the finesse of social etiquette and poetic expression.

I was fifteen when I bought it, filled with the first impulses to attain a distinct social success in the rural community in which I lived, and yet modest enough to admit that there were many of the graces of society which I had not yet acquired, and many of the exactions of good manners with which I was not familiar. A smooth-tongued college student, trying to earn enough money during the summer to keep him going through the winter, sold it to me, and guaranteed it to give satisfaction or the money would be refunded. The price was $5.5O in exquisite silk cloth and $7.00 in full morocco.

The book contained everything from how to grow beets to the ten commandments; it gave explicit information on the widest variety of topics from how to open a set of ac-


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 counts to the proper method of approaching a young woman with an offer of marriage. I can not say that it ever got me very far, however, in any of the arts which it professed to teach except, perhaps, to impress me more strongly with my ignorance, to convince me of how little of manners and morals may be learned from books, and yet to cause me to see how necessary it is that we have some knowledge of these things and practice them early in life. The ill-mannered, crude boy in high school seldom, in my experience, develops into the gracious, easy mannered man. The high school age is the habit-forming age; it is the age when principles of action are developed, and when moral and social ideals are set up. For these things the school and the home have pretty heavy responsibilities resting upon them, and these things are not likely to be learned from books.

We are tremendously practical these days. Our idea of education is that it consists mostly of facts and general information concerning mathematics and literature and science and language. We must know the immediate and practical purpose of these facts, too, if we consent to assimilate them. The average boy who follows a curriculum in high school or who studies any particular subject wants to be shown where he will profit by it. Unless he can see that he can cash in on his work before he has gone far, his enthusiasm wanes. The doing of a thing for its own sake makes no appeal to him; there must be a definite and specific financial consideration assured him.


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 There are few things, excepting good morals, which are of more real value to a boy than good taste and good manmersmanners [sic]; they are among the things that pay. Both the principles and the practice should be learned in school, for principles here are of little value unless they can be carried into practice every day on the street, in the home, and in the classroom. I asked a well-known engineer in New Haven once what advice he would give to a young technical man who was hunting a job.

"Tell him," was the answer, "to choose his neckties thoughtfully and to be careful of his manners."

I asked another prominent man of affairs not long ago what special criticism he made of the young fellows who came to him for employment.

"Their English is poor, and their laundry bills too small," was his reply.

Good manners will accomplish a great deal for a boy when other things fail. As an executive officer, I am charged with the responsibility of giving or denying special privileges to students in the institution to which I belong. I try to be as consistent and unprejudiced as any one with human instincts and emotions can be, and yet I am sure I am often uneven in my decisions; I am often "worked," as boys say.

Carter came in at Thanksgiving time to ask for an extension of leave. He is a freshman and had not been home since September. His case was fair, but he presented it badly. When I hesitated, he grew irritated and as-


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 sumed a rather arrogant and impudent manner. If I did not let him go it was a "rotten shame," and not in any sense giving him a "square deal," he asserted. There was nothing to do but to refuse his request if I were to keep my self-respect, and he flushed hot and banged the door furiously as he went out.

Then Hughes came in, smiling and gracious and frank.

"We boys are a terrible bother to you, aren't we?" he began.

"Not always," I said. "What would you like?"

"It's nervy in me to ask, I know," he went on, "but I don't want to come back until Tuesday morning after Thanksgiving. I haven't much of an excuse you'll think, but there's a party Monday night, and there's a girl at home I know, and—and I'd like to take her to the party." He looked up blushing.

Well, there was a girl once I knew—there is yet in fact—whom I liked tremendously well to take to a party.

"That'll be all right, Hughes," I said; "give her my love."

Now, when I thought it over at night, I wasn't quite sure that I'd been fair to Carter. He had as good a case as Hughes; he had simply put it unfortunately. He didn't have good manners, and I had refused him only because he was not quite polite. I have an idea that many people do the same sort of thing for a similar reason.

Good manners must be genuine to make a permanent


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 impression, must be based upon a real desire to give pleasure and comfort to others. When people first met McKee they thought him the most charming boy imaginable. He was always on his feet when a lady came into the room; he never talked to a girl without taking off his hat, as any polite boy would do; he showed all the externals of respect for his teachers and for his elders. He was as punctilious in standing at attention and saying "sir" as a boy just out of military school. He was quiet, attentive, and thoughtful. But when one came to know him better one realized that he was tricky, deceitful, given to profane and vulgar talk. His apparent politeness was only a subterfuge for the accomplishment of his selfish purposes. When those who had to associate with him found out his real character, his false politeness became an insult and a lie.

A boy is, of course, supposed to learn good manners at home, but as often as not he fails. He is not judged at home with an impartial eye; his little slips are overlooked or condoned. If he is the youngest or the only child or the child of well-to-do parents, he is usually spoiled and made selfish, and as I have just said, the selfish boy is seldom polite. Sometimes he comes from a home where the courtesies of life are little known or still less practiced, and where there is little for him to learn. In more cases than otherwise it falls back upon the schools and especially upon the high school and the academy to inculcate in him the principles of good manners. It


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 dollies that had sprung up without any clothes.) It was Mrs. Santa Claus, of course, and as she hugged and kissed the children she said to Santa Claus, “The dears, where did you find them?”

“Out in the garden,” answered Santa Claus. “I don’t know how they came here, but they are excellent helpers. They have been helping me to gather my toys. I shall soon be ready now, after I do a little more work in my shop. You know, my dear, I must first test my winding toys, for that clock-work machinery does break so easily.”

As he talked, Santa Claus took off his cap and coat, rolled up his sleeves and went right to work. He wound and tested each toy, and Willie helped him by handing him the keys for each one. There was a honk-honk-honk, a toot- toot- toot, a chug, chug.


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 is upon his teacher that he must rely both for principles and for illustration of their practice.

There was a letter in my morning mail a few days ago from Porter that brought me pleasure and surprise. Most of my letters from undergraduates begin: "You will no doubt be surprised to hear from me, but the fact is I want something," but Porter wanted nothing. He is only seventeen. His father is a working man; his mother is without education and is busy from dawn to dark with the household cares incident to a large family. The boy has had no social experience; and one could not reasonably expect much social finesse in him. The note which he had written me was carefully written, in unquestionably good form. It was frank and boyish but phrased in as throughly good taste as might have been shown by a trained social secretary.

I had done the boy a trifling kindness when he was ill in the hospital—an attention which a thousand boys had received from my hands—or yours perhaps—before and had passed by unnoticed and unacknowledged. His note was to express his appreciation of my courtesy and to thank me for it. It had pleased both him and his parents, he said, to have me come and see him, and the book I had loaned him he had thoroughly enjoyed. His thoughtfulness touched me; it made me happy all day long, and it left a pleasant memory which will not soon fade. I knew where he received his inspiration. It was from some teacher in the high school—sensible,


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 sympathetic—who had given him the idea and left the impression in his mind.

In contrast to this was another experience I had only a little while ago. A young fellow came to see me who had been dismissed from one institution and who wished to enter another. He was the son of a well-to-do man; he had been brought up under good social conditions; he might very reasonably have been expected to have an acquaintance with good social form. I listened to his story, and I saw that his situation was a most difficult one and one that very much required that he have a friend at court to make a strong plea for him. I had never seen him before, but I undertook to help him. I wrote a letter to a college officer in another institution, a man with whom I had an intimate acquaintance, and I gave it to the boy. I learned afterwards that it accomplished the purpose for which it was written and secured for the young fellow admission to the other institution. I have no recollection that he thanked me when I gave him the letter, and I know that he has not done so since. I have never had a word from him, and some way I can't help but wonder who taught him English composition in high school, who is responsible for his manners.

A friend of mine not long ago invited to dinner a half dozen boys just out of high school and away from home for the first time. The invitation was given in all kindness. She hoped to give pleasure to young fellows whom she imagined to be homesick, and it was at no little


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 trouble and self-sacrifice that she prepared the meal. Two of the boys did not reply at all to her note, the other four accepted her invitation, but only two showed up at the dinner. Not one has called on her or in any way acknowledged her courtesy since, and yet they had all come from excellent high schools and some of them had been brought up in families who admitted they were above the middle classes. It was annoying to the hostess, but, of course, the person who really suffered the most was the boy himself whose training had been so inadequate.

Every autumn I watch the long line of freshmen just out of the academy or the high school as they go through the preliminary steps to enter college. The registrar's office is just across the hall from my own. Half the boys do business with their hats on, though most of the registrar's clerks are young women, and other attractive young women are standing about them—standing sometimes even when the young men are sitting. Taking the hat off is, of course, only a convention meaningless in itself, but it has come to suggest respect for women, respect for authority, respect for the house that shelters us, and no gentleman can afford to ignore it. I see these same boys later smoking at parties or as they walk down the street with young women, unconscious of the fact that by so doing they are proclaiming their lack of good breeding.

There are a thousand courtesies and conventions to be


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 thought how even now they might be exclaiming at the green smoke of the first buds on the brown undergrowth by the pond, and at that I slid off the tree-trunk and began walking very quickly down the hill. The red cows drank from the pond cupped by the willow-roots; a raw-boned stallion danced clumsily because warmth was running through the ground. I found a stream in the fields and followed it till it became a shining dike embanked with glowing green and gold mosses in the midst of woods; and the sight of those things was no sort of joy, because my vision was solitary. I wanted to end my desperation by leaping from a height, and I climbed on a knoll and flung myself face downward on the dead leaves below.

I was now utterly cut off from Chris. Before, when I looked at him, I knew an instant ease in the sight of the short golden down on his cheeks, the ridge of bronze flesh above his thick, fair eyebrows. But


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 learned in high school—courtesies to women, respect for authority, the acknowledgment of kindnesses received, attention to the wishes and comforts of others, regard for one's elders, attention to the conventionalities of the society in which we live, the expression of sympathy in sorrow, of joy in success, of congratulation in the accomplishment of what our friends and acquaintances have attempted. Much of this finds expression in the thoughtful words which we may utter when face to face with friends, but more of it will be seen in the note of thanks or congratulation or condolence which requires only a few moments to write and which brings the greater pleasure often because it is unexpected. A brief, frank, well-worded note will often bring more pleasure to the recipient than a costly gift.

But after all you must have something more than mere good manners. Every day, almost, I am called upon to write letters recommending young fellows whom I have known while they were in college. Those who make inquiry always want information in very specific things. Is the man honest, can his word be relied upon, is he a fellow of clean and temperate habits, does he gamble? The men themselves who ask these questions may not be wholly exemplary in their own conduct, but they do not care to employ men who can not furnish a clean record. It is during the years of physical and mental development in the high school that moral principles are formulated and strengthened quite as much as at home.


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 Sometimes the boy with good manners and rather uncertain morals seems to manage as well as if his principles of conduct were quite above reproach. One of the best-mannered boys I have ever known was of this sort. He was good-tempered, polite, thoughtful of others, clever, a veritable Steerforth, in fact. He never seemed either to say or do the tactless thing, and he was loved by many people and thought charming by more. But one did not know him long until it became evident that he was selfish. He never did a kindness that involved a personal sacrifice. He never gave up or resisted anything that furnished him personal or physical pleasure. The result was inevitable. He made friends only to use them for his own ends; he was honest only when honesty subserved his purpose. He wasted his money, he learned to gamble, to drink, to engage in the most unclean practices simply because he had no real moral principles. He is charming still at forty, but no one trusts him; he picks up a precarious livelihook by the most irregular business methods. He might have been anything he chose if he had been honest and clean.

Sometimes the boy with good morals and without the finesse of good manners grows a trifle discouraged.

"It doesn't pay," he affirms. "It is the smooth guy who gets by."

He finds himself unpopular, ignored, made fun of, and he attributes the result to his rigid principles rather than to his lack of tact, or to his crude manners. A boy with


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 good principles and good manners is invincible. He has friends, he commands respect, he has two strong and trusty weapons with which to combat temptation and to meet difficulty.

First of all you will have to be honest. The line between what is honest and what is not is not so widely drawn even among men of experience that it is not strange that young boys should often become confused in the matter, and yet the distinction between what is mine and what is thine, between borrowing and theft, between crime and a practical joke ought to be distinguishable.

Few boys would give a burglar a leg into the window of a house which he was about to rob, yet it takes more principle than most boys possess to refuse to give help to a needy friend or even to a passing acquaintance who asks for it in a school examination. If he demurs at all, it is quite as often from the fear of being detected as from any moral principle which actuates him, though one act is as undeniably dishonest as the other. I have put the question to scores of boys, yet I have seen few who did not feel that it was rather a virtue than otherwise to help a man who is in trouble even though the help was simply an aid to dishonesty. I have even known fathers who, while they would have been sorry to have their sons crib, were yet rather proud that these same sons had aided some one else to be dishonest.

There is often a feeling among boys, also, that an examination in school is not a test of their knowledge but a con-


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 test between teacher and pupil—something similar, in fact, to love or war where anything is fair if it is not found out. They do not realize that when they write their names on an examination, they are virtually saying "The contents of this paper are absolutely mine."

"I must run along," a high school boy calling at my house said to me not many evenings ago. "I have to write a theme for Blanche; she loaned me her algebra probblems, and I must pay her back."

His is a common practice, but it is the beginning of a sort of dishonesty which helps to weaken principle and to undermine good scholarship.

A young friend of mine came home from school one evening in spring with a big bunch of roses in his hands.

"Where did you get the flowers, John?" his father inquired.

"Out of Mrs. Perkins' yard," was the reply.

"Did she give them to you?"

"No, Fred and I just took them."

Fred was standing by holding an even larger bunch.

"Go to Mrs. Perkins and give her back the roses," the father said, "and tell her that you didn't realize when you took them that you were actually stealing."

"But, father, I don't know Mrs. Perkins," John protested.

"You'll know her when you have had this talk with her," was the reassuring reply, "and I'm sure you will find it easier next time not to take other people's property."


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 "I should not have humiliated my son in that way," Fred's father said to John's later when they were talking the matter over.

"Such a trifling humiliation is not to be considered," the other man replied, "if I help to make my son honest."

I was going down town not long ago, and I invited Bill to go with me. We were to take the street car, and it was naturally to be supposed that, since I had extended the invitation to him, I would be responsible for the fare. I ran my hand into my pocket as we started and found a quarter there, so I knew that I could finance the trip easily. We did our errand, and were on the car coming back when I discovered that I still had the twenty-five cents unbroken in my pocket. The conductor on the down trip had evidently passed me up when collecting fares, and it had escaped my notice. As he came up to me now, I handed him the coin, saying "Two fares." He rang up two but gave me twenty cents in change.

"What shall I do?" I asked Bill. "We did not pay our fares going down, and the conductor has just short changed himself a nickel."

"Your're a fool if you give the man the fare for the down town trip, but you should pay him the nickel on which he just now made a mistake."

"Why?" I inquired.

"The dime is the company's loss, and it was their fault they didn't collect it. The conductor will have to make


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 good on the nickel when he cashes in, if you don't give it to him."

I have put the case up to a hundred boys since that time, and they have all given me the same answer. It is all right, they think, to steal from a corporation, but not quite honest to steal from an individual or profit by his mistake. They fail to see that real honesty will not permit us to steal from anyone.

I have done business for many years with all kinds of boys—the lazy and the shiftless, the selfish and the careless, those who have been thoughtless and those who have been dissipated and immoral. I can get on better with any one else than the liar. Truth is at the foundation of confidence; no business can be done satisfactorily without it; it is one of the cardinal principles of character. There is, of course, too, the half truth that is the worst sort of lie—the words which are themselves not false in their meaning, but which are so uttered as to convey false impression.

Robey, whose allowance was quite adequate, had been very neglectful in the payment of some of his hills. I spoke to him about the matter, and he assured me he would take care of the bills at once. A month later I found that he was still owing on one of the old accounts.

"I have written the check today," he said when I called him the second time. I said nothing more, because to my mind his statement meant that the bill was paid. I was


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 very much surprised to find six weeks later that nothing had been done about the matter.

"I'm afraid you did not tell me the truth," I said to Robey when he came in response to my call.

"I didn't tell you I'd paid the bill," he said in explanation, "I said I'd written the check. I just didn't send it."

"But you meant me to think you had sent it, didn't you?"

"I suppose so."

And now Robey thinks it a trifle unfair when I hesitate to take his statements of fact without pretty careful analysis.

Sometimes it is hard to tell the truth—especially when it involves some one else or reflects upon your own character or conduct. There is, in my estimation at least, a generally prevalent false sense of honor which makes it wrong to tell the truth when the facts if known would not be creditable to some one else. I have never understood why. It is certainly not so in legal proceeding or in adult life. It demands unusual courage often to tell the truth especially when the consequences might be avoided.

McDonald was waiting for me when I came into the office one morning a short time ago.

"I want to tell you something," he said. "It isn't creditable to me, and possibly you'll think when I'm through that I'm a pretty poor chap; but I want to get it off my mind. I've got to have my own self-respect if I'm to be happy."


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 Then he told me that when he had presented his credits from high school in the fall, the record had not been correct—he had been given credit for subjects which he had never taken, and, though he recognized the mistake, he had said nothing about it. Now he wanted the matter straightened out, even if he were dismissed from college.

"What are you going to do to me?" he asked when he was through with his story—a story which he had told with much embarrassment.

"We'll first have your high school record corrected," I said, "and then we'll forget all about the rest of the story. Only I want to say that you are a thousand times better and stronger boy for having told the truth."

I said that many boys find it embarrassing and difficult to tell the truth when the facts to be revealed are discreditable to some one else. I have no reference to trifling derelictions which are often a matter of personal opinion and which do not concern the well-being of the community, but to matters of real moral significance which vitally affect the interests of others. In the former case every sensible person would respect the boy who refused to say anything at all. What I have in mind concerns real immorality.

There had been in our gymnasium considerable stealing of watches and money and clothing of all sorts. I was pretty well convinced who had done it and was trying to confirm my convictions. I was sure that Moore would


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 be able to help me out if he would tell what he knew, and I called him.

"I couldn't tell you about that," he said, "I've been brought up to believe that it is not honorable to give another fellow away."

"I respect the general principle," I admitted, "but this man is a thief who is living on the community and is robbing boys who will be forced to leave college if the thing continues."

"That doesn't make any difference," Moore replied.

Ultimately the real thief when he was caught (and he did prove to be the acquaintance of Moore whom I had suspected,) accused Moore of the theft, for any thief will lie in order to cover up his own dishonesties, and he is seldom discriminating in choosing the men whom he accuses.

I have known many boys with the false standard of responsibility who held that it was wrong under any circumstances to involve others than themselves in any dereliction and who considered that they were doing a virtuous act when they lied to keep a guilty companion out of trouble. We are forced to change such standards as these when we become adult members of society, for the courts do not allow such a view point, but on the other hand hold that the good citizen is not only responsible for his own conduct but must exercise restraining influence upon his neighbor and inform on him if he is a law breaker.

Every boy is under a moral obligation to work hard, to carry through what he begins whether or not it is agreeable


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 really wanted Kitty; the companions I needed were Chris and Margaret. Chris would have talked, as he loved to do when he looked at leisure on a broad valley, about ideas which he had to exclude from his ordinary hours lest they should break the power of business over his mind, and Margaret would have gravely watched the argument from the shadow of her broad hat to see that it kept true, like a housewife watching a saucepan of milk lest it should boil over. They were naturally my friends, these gentle, speculative people.

Then suddenly I was stunned with jealousy. It was not their love for each other that caused me such agony at that moment; it was the thought of the things their eyes had rested upon together. I imagined that white hawthorn among the poplars by the ferry on which they had looked fifteen years ago at Monkey Island, and it was more than I could bear. I


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 or interesting, to keep his promises even though the keeping be difficult or disagreeable. At home and in school we have become so accustomed to following the line of least resistance, to choosing for study only such subjects as we find easy or entertaining, to doing only those things which we like, that we balk when it comes to any hard or disagreeable work.

Frank's teacher in astronomy reported that he was not going to class. Since he had signed up for the course and was under obligations to attend it unless released by the Dean, I called him to inquire the cause of his absence.

"I don't care for it," he said. "It's hard, it doesn't interest me and I just quit it. I don't see what good astronomy is going to do me."

He had no sense of obligation to carry through what he had begun, no pride whatsoever in his class record. He was looking for the snap, for something that in itself awakened his interest; he had no conception of the moral and intellectual benefits of hard work.

There is no moral principle which is more fundamental for the high school boy to learn than that which has to do with the clean personal life. If the army taught anything, it taught us that. Every year I give to the freshmen who are just entering my own institution from high school a series of talks on personal hygiene including the dangers and physical effects of drinking and of bad sexual practices. The thing that surprises me always is how little they know and how little of what they know is true. They


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 have the most distorted ideas of a normal healthy sexual life and of the effects of sexual disease. If they follow immoral or intemperate practices in college, in nine cases out of ten they have begun these practices long before they were ready for college, and have pitifully little conception of the ultimate dangers to character and health involved. A beginning in self-discipline should be made when impulses and imagination first lead a boy into untoward things, and this is at the beginning of high school rather than at the beginning of college. A boy's moral status is pretty well settled when he enters college. Someone should have laid down for him definite principles of personal thinking and personal conduct. Some one should have had the courage and the tact to tell him frankly and straightforwardly of his physical being, of the sacredness of his body and the necessity of his keeping it morally clean. If this is not done in the high school, there is very little likelihood of its being done at home.

A father sat in my office a few days ago talking about his freshman son. He had come in response to a letter from me. The boy was doing no good in college, his habits were bad, he was the victim of disease. I told the father the wretched unpleasant truth as gently as I could, and, he seemed surprised, stunned.

"But my boy has always been a good boy," he said. "How has it been possible for college to ruin him so quickly?"

"You are mistaken," I answered. "Every experience


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 he has had in college he had tried before he came. If you think I am wrong ask him."

I knew I was right, for the boy had told me so, and he had told me also that neither at home nor in the high school had he been given any specific or friendly instruction as to the danger to his mind or to his body of the habits which he began early to form.

"If you want us to live a clean life, to stand for the highest moral principles," one of my freshmen said to me not long ago, "don't wait until we get to college before you set before us the ideals we should follow; begin in high school before we have begun the practices which are sometimes almost impossible to give up."

Every boy comes to the time when his moral principles are tested, when temptation stares him suddenly in the face, when he must prove to himself and to his friends whether these principles are a pretense or a reality. As their foundations were laid early, as they have been held to firmly and honestly they will stand, for the ultimate test of any boy's manners or morals is how successfully he will meet the unexpected social or moral crisis.


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I suppose that at one time or another in his life, every boy plans to be a street car conductor or a railroad engineer, or at least to follow some pursuit of an active mechanical nature. Most boys like to see the wheels go round. As for me, I was determined to be a doctor. I imagine I was led to this conclusion through watching Doctor Triplett who visited the sick in our country community in his two wheeled sulky drawn by a rangy spirited gray horse. It seemed to me there would be more pleasure and less hard work in such a vocation than in any other with which I was familiar. I did not take into account the long dreary rides through the bitter cold of winter or the bottomless mud of early spring to visit people who never paid, perhaps. I saw only the pleasant side of it.

As society is run now it is essential that every one have some business or profession by means of which he may eat and be clothed and have some recreation. Excepting that we are healthier and happier as a result of regular work, and that for most of us it is necessary to existence, I imagine that most of us would not concern ourselves as much with work as we now do. I have never believed, and a long experience has not tended to change my opinion, that every young fellow is cut out for so definite and specific a job


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 Rh them as to borrow large sums of money from them. Do you object to this?”

“No,” I said frankly, “I do not.”

“Good! You will also mingle freely in Ambassadorial and foreign circles. It would be well for you to dine, at least once a week, with the British Ambassador. And now one final word”—here Gestern spoke with singular impressiveness—“as to the President of the United States.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You must mix with him on a footing of the most open-handed friendliness. Be at the White House continually. Make yourself in the fullest sense of the words the friend and adviser of the President. All this I think is clear. In fact, it is only what is done, as you know, by all the masters of international diplomacy.”

“Precisely,” I said.

“Very good. And then,” continued the Baron, “as soon as you find yourself sufficiently en rapport with everybody, or I should say,” he added in correction, for the Baron shares fully in the present German horror of imported French words, “when you find yourself sufficiently in enggeknüpfterverwandtschaft with everybody, you may then proceed to advance your peace terms. And now, my dear fellow,” said the Baron, with a touch of genuine cor-

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 that if he does not hit upon this particular position, he is ruined for life. No more do I think that there is in the world somewhere for every man a particular woman, whom he must meet and win or be forever unhappy. Men are for the most part adaptable; they can as often as otherwise fit equally well into various positions or professions, and can find happiness with many sorts of people. A good lawyer might very easily have made an equally successful physician if he had gone into the latter profession with earnestness.

There are in some people, however, peculiar weaknesses which are difficult to strengthen; peculiar talents which fit them for particular work. Some people could be musicians or plumbers and little else. Such people should choose a profession thoughtfully and carefully. The less balanced and normal the brain, the less evenly developed one's powers are, the more one is a genius, the more necessary it is that one should get into the kind of work to which he is particularly adapted, or evade that which he would find impossible. If a boy is intending to study engineering he should have special ability and interest in mathematics; if he is to be a clergyman, he ought to have some leanings toward religion. A prospective surgeon should be adept in the use of his fingers, and anyone proposing to study law should be capable of logical reasoning.

One can not always with certainty decide whether or not he has special fitness in one profession or another. A boy's father assured me not long since that he was


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 convinced his son would make an excellent lawyer because he was such a ready talker. If the ability to talk readily fitted one for the practice of law, women, some people think, would have a distressing handicap over men. Fluent speech is, of course, often a help to a lawyer if it is accompanied by other talents, but fluent speech which is not induced by logical reasoning and an accurate knowledge of law may as likely as not be a handicap instead of an asset to a man attempting to practice law. Lawyers have been known to lose their cases by not knowing when to stop talking. Again parents frequently assure me that their young sons have unusual fitness for engineering work because, perhaps, they have constructed an electric motor, or made a water wheel, or fixed a refractory lawn mower. Such mechanical ability is often an aid to engineering work, but it is in no way an absolute necessity or a manifestation of engineering genius. It suggests the mechanic rather than the engineer.

So far as it is possible, however, one should find out whatever special fitness he may have for any one work and devote himself to that. Teachers can help in this decision; parents should recognize the talents of their children and try to make the most of them; the boy himself should analyze his own special fitness. I have never been sure as to just how accurately the average man can judge of his own individual ability. A shrewd executive whom I once knew used to say that when a young man confessed to more than ordinary skill in any


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 one direction or thought himself especially fitted for a particular type of work, it was rather conclusive evidence that he might better take up some other. However that may be, I have seldom in teaching English composition, found that the man who laid claim to any particular skill in writing actually possessed much. Accurate self-judgment is difficult, but too much self-assurance is often an evidence of weakness.

Granted that a boy has unusual mental gifts; a peculiar danger often confronts him—the danger of depending upon his unusual ability to carry him through without work. It is an old saying that the only genius worth much is the genius for hard work. I have known a few geniuses, but I do not now recall more than one or two who got far in the professions which they adopted, because very few of them were willing to work regularly or seriously. Knowing their ability, they grew to depend upon it to carry them through at the last moment without any regular hard labor on their part; not willing to work hard and regularly, they did not increase their power; they were no more able to accomplish results at the end of ten years of practice than at the beginning of their careers.

"Can't I come back next September," a freshman who had failed asked me, "and start all over again as if nothing had happened?"

It was hard for him to see that a year of loafing had had an effect on him which could not be eliminated by


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 forgetting the past. Powers that are not increased wane; the mind will not stand still in its development.

If you are taking up any work or profession it is wisest to understand beforehand what it involves. Read books on the subject; if you are thinking of engineering or medicine or law, get hold of some successful engineer or doctor or lawyer and ask him about the training necessary to success in his profession and the difficulties incident to it. He will probably advise you to try some other profession. He will enlarge on the difficulties, no doubt, of his own particular calling, but this fact need not serve to discourage you. You will find often that what on the surface seemed easy sailing has been a hazardous voyage full of storms and often suggestive of shipwreck. Men will advise you to keep out of the profession which they are following, because knowing as intimately as they do the hardships of their own calling, and being acquainted only with the externals of others, they imagine their own to be the most difficult and wearing and unsatisfactory of all. Fathers especially are loath to seeing their sons take up the line of work in which they themselves have become established and have succeeded.

"I don't want my son to take up my profession," I hear scores of fathers say. "There is nothing in it but hard work."

So, too, men who have come up to affluence through sacrifice and toil, say, "I never want my son to go through what I have gone through," not realizing that what


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 they went through gave them the strength and the success which they attained.

There is always the misleading suggestion by these men that in any other profession but their own efficiency and success are attained without labor, and that hard labor is if possible to be avoided, while the truth of the matter is that no one is likely to get far in any sort of business without persistent, steady, hard work. Don't be discouraged because your proposed profession involves hard work.

There is often a considerable advantage to a boy in choosing to carry on the business which his father has followed. His unconscious observation of the details of his father's business gives him a handicap over another man going into the same business wholly without experience. He is likely to know more about his father's business than any other. The counsel and advice which the older man could give the younger should never be disregarded, and the ready opening which the younger man might find in his father's profession or establishment when his education is completed should not be undervalued. The fact that such a man will be prepared for the difficulties and the discouragements of his profession, and will not be surprised or caught unawares by them will contribute somewhat to his success. There is more independence, of course, in starting out alone, and most boys like so far as possible to feel that they are under obligation to no one, and have been the cause


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 chug, and a clang, clang, clang, as automobiles, boats, engines, fire-engines and all kinds of mechanical toys went running about the shop like mad. Next Santa was working with his saw and plane, his hammer and nails, and with a rap and a tap he finished the roof of a doll’s house.

Mrs. Santa had dressed all the dolls and furnished the dolls’ houses. “What a cute little kitchen!” exclaimed Annie. “Oh, Willie, do you see this dining-room and the cunning parlor and this little bed-room? How I should love to play dolls in this house!” Then Annie turned to Mrs. Santa Claus and said, “May I not help you? I could thread your needles or help in some way.”

“Why, so you may, my dear,” answered Mrs. Santa Claus. “My eyes are getting


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 of their own success. It is better, however, to be a good farmer on the old home place than it is to be a second-rate engineer on your own account.

It is usually a mistake to let some one else make the choice for you, even if the person who offers to do so or who insists upon doing so is your father or mother. I know parents who select the professions for their children and map out in minute detail the line of education each one is to follow, and who have everything all settled, perhaps, even before the child is born. It is a process which more often than otherwise results in a lack of enthusiasm if not in failure on the part of the child. I can at this time recall only one young fellow whose father, contrary to the boy's own desires, picked out a profession for his son, who ever accomplished much that was worth while in the work he undertook. It is about as safe to allow some one else to select for you the girl you are to marry as it is to let him, without regard to your interests and desires, pick out for you your life work. The choice ought to be your own.

Chilton, stumbling through his sophomore year in college, had been making a sad failure; he showed no enthusiasm, no interest, no energy in the work for which he was registered.

"Why are you taking engineering?" I asked. "You don't like mathematics, and mechanics is a closed book to you."

"Well, I never wanted to do it," he replied. "I really


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 that spread a gray clarity of light in which every color showed sharp and strong. On the breast that Harrowweald turns to the south they had set a lambing-yard. The pale-lavender hurdles and gold-strewn straw were new gay notes on the opaque winter green of the slope, and the apprehensive bleatings of the ewes wound about the hill like a river of sound as they were driven up a lane hidden by the hedge. The lines of bare elms darkening the plains below made it seem as though the tide of winter had fallen and left this bare and sparkling in the spring. I liked it so much that I opened the gate and went and sat down on a tree which had been torn up by the roots in the great gale last year, but had not yet resigned itself to death, and was bravely decking its boughs with purple elm-flowers.

That pleased me, too, and I wished I had some one with me to enjoy this artless little show of the new year. I had not


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 wanted to go into business, but father insisted on my studying engineering because he thought it offered the best opportunities to a young fellow of anything going, and because Uncle John is in a position to give me a job and a good start when I have graduated."

Chilton will never make an engineer no matter how hard his father sets his jaw and no matter how good a job his Uncle John has waiting for him, because he hasn't a mathematical brain, he doesn't like engineering, and he has not learned to do anything well which he doesn't like.

This leads me to say that there is probably no more foolish practice than to choose a business or a profession purely because in itself it seems to offer peculiar opportunities or attractions. All through the summer following their graduation from high school, boys come to see me or write to me concerning their entrance to college.

"What do you think is a good course for a fellow to take up?" they ask me, with the idea in mind that there must be some work par excellence in itself, regardless of the individual or of his attitude toward his work. They do not see that it is the man and not the profession that brings about success. They argue that because electricity is the coming motive power, electrical engineering is really the only course to pursue if they are going to college, or possibly that because chemistry has played such a wonderful part in the war and will play an even more wonderful part in the reconstruction which follows the war, chemistry is an unusually good field for a boy to enter. They are, no


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 doubt, correct in supposing that chemistry and electricity will be more generally than ever put to practical use in the coming years, but no course is in itself a good course, and no line of work offers special opportunities unless the men who pursue them show special fitness.

There was a letter in my mail only a few days ago from a young fellow just graduated from high school, who, without money, was considering the possibility of going to college.

"I should like to know," he wrote, "just what special inducements your University will offer me in the way of a chance to earn my living. I want to go to college, and I am intending to choose the college which will make me the most attractive offer and the course which suggests the greatest future." He mentioned no special fitness, no talents or training or experience which should give bim preference or precedence over other boys.

I replied that he was looking at the matter from the wrong angle. The college welcomes the boy who has most ability, who can do something better than common, who has special fitness for a definite job, and such a boy can get a job almost anywhere he goes. It is in such a way as this young fellow was looking at his job in college that some men regard a profession. They are willing to sell themselves to the profession which bids the highest, not realizing that it is their own personal qualities and interest which determine whether or not the job is worth while. I am convinced that many of the failures which young


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 fellows meet in all lines of business and especially in technical courses in college come largely from the fact that men have gone into them not because of any special fitness or of any special interest in the work or liking for it, but because they felt that the particular business or profession which they were taking up offered an easy and sure approach to success.

In choosing a profession one ought to be willing to reach success slowly and by reasonable stages.

Cowan did well in high school and college. He was not afraid of work, he showed enthusiasm, and he was dependable. His character was above reproach, and his personality was unusually attractive. I used often to marvel at the ease with which he met people, the rapidity with which he made friends, and the facility with which he dispatched business; but yet he did not get on. He tried life insurance but gave it up at the end of a few months; he took up the real estate business; he was a traveling salesman for a tractor company; he went in with a reputable manufacturing concern; but he did not stick long. He drifted from one thing to another, and at the end of ten years he had got nowhere; yet everyone admitted his ability.

The real cause of his failure was that Cowan wanted to succeed at a bound; he was looking for something that would make him rich or famous or independent in a short time. He was not willing to go through the long period of servitude and drudgery that practically every success-


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 ful or professional or business man has found necessary before he reached the goal of his ambitions. So he rushed from one rainbow end to another in a vain endeavor to find the pot of gold without digging for it.

Two friends of mine, a steady, successful, middle-aged eouple, were stopping for a time at a high-priced hotel in the Allegheny mountains.

"Isn't it strange," Mrs. Granger said to her husband, "how few young people there are here. Almost everyone is middle-aged or past it."

"That's easy," her husband responded. "A man has to be forty-five before he has made enough money to afford to come here."

It is a hard lesson for a boy to learn that in any profession or business that is worth while success comes slowly. Persistence is necessary; faithfulness, courage and willingness to wait for results. It is the hardest, after all, for a boy to learn to wait, for him to realize that the profession or business that promises immediate success is frequently, like the skilfully gilded brick, a thing to be wary of.

One should not choose a profession in which he has no special interest and for the work of which he has no liking. A month or two ago a high school senior from a neighboring state brought to me a letter of introduction from a former student of mine with the request that I should give the boy advice as to the choice of his profession. The young fellow seemed normal in every


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 way. His course in high school had been well balanced and was made up of mathematics, and language, and science varied enough to test his ability. He had done one thing about as well as another. It did seem, however, that he had rather unusual talents in music. The history of his family on both his father's and mother's side showed musical appreciation and technical skill. He was himself a more than ordinarily skilful pianist. It was my friend's opinion that the boy ought to study music and prepare himself to become a professional musician rather than to take scientific or technical work. I talked with him for some time to get his reactions.

"What do you want to do?" I finally asked him.

"I'd rather be a chemical engineer than anything else in the world," was his reply. "l'dI'd [sic] be willing to work my head off, if I could get a chance to study chemistry."

His point of view is the only safe guide to the solution of the problem of choosing a profession. Interest, desire, the willingness to work at a thing because one likes it—that is the test which every boy should apply to himself when he is making the choice of the work which he is to take up for life. Every business, every profession is full of men who are working because they have to do so and not because they want to do sof who drag themselves to their tasks with lagging steps and unenthusiastic spirits. The most favored positions in life are full of difficulties. Every position and every profession has its trials and its hard problems that will test the courage and try the temper of


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 old and if you will thread my needles it will be a great help.” So Annie threaded needles and helped Mrs. Santa Claus to dress the last doll and then to pack all the clothes in a new doll’s trunk.

Santa Claus sat at his desk and finished writing a story and drawing the last pictures when suddenly the clock struck, Dingdong-ding. Twelve times it struck and Mrs. Santa Claus said, “It is time you were up and away, sir.” She helped Santa Claus into his big cloak and he pulled on his high boots and his warm gloves and pulled his cap down over his ears.

Just then the reindeer were heard prancing and pawing outside, impatient to be off and away. Santa Claus bundled his big pack of toys into his sleigh and put in all his Christmas trees. He kissed Mrs. Santa on


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 the best of men. Unless one likes his work, unless he can show interest and enthusiasm in it, his lot is a sad one. One should choose for his life work something in which he will find pleasure, he should go to it every morning with delight and should leave it with something like regret. Otherwise there will be for him constant grumbling, unrest and discontent.

It is easy to find illustrations of the fact that interest and enthusiasm will work wonders. Not many years ago a young fellow from a country town in the middle west applied for admission to one of our middle west educational institutions. He had had no high school training, and the admission requirements of the institution were severe. He was past twenty-one years of age, however, so that he was admitted on trial as a special student and allowed to attempt to carry the regular work of the freshman year of the course in which he was interested. It was his greatest pleasure to have a chance to study the subjects which he liked, and he carried that same interest and enthusiasm to all other subjects which he attempted or which he was required to take. During his leisure hours he devoted himself to the high school work which he had missed as a boy, passed it off by examination, and at the end of four years and a half he graduated as an honor student.

No one ever thought that he had a brilliant mind; he had interest and he was willing to work. If such a man as he without adequate preparation, and with


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 only average brains, could through desire and interest mainly, accomplish such gratifying results, what could a thoroughly well-prepared man not do? And what is true of one sort of work is true of another. It is the man who is working because he enjoys it who throws his whole soul into what he is doing and who can not be excelled or defeated. It is the men who have no enthusiasms, and who can't get down to work, who are always in doubt as to whether or not they have chosen correctly, and who seldom succeed. The young fellow who knows what he wants to do and is willing and eager to do whatever is necessary to accomplish his purposes is a long way toward success. The man who doesn't know his own mind, who is waiting for someone to pick out for him a good job, or to set him up in a successful business, has little chance of getting anywhere.

Men say sometimes that the thing they would like most to do requires so much preparation before they are ready to go on with it, that they can not afford the time or the money required to fit them to begin. They would like to be lawyers or physicians or preachers or architects or whatever it may be, but to be a well-prepared physician requires seven or eight years of study and preparation not to speak of the sum of money to be expended, and they feel that they will be half through life before they are ready to take up its duties. Men excuse themselves for not finishing a college course which they have begun, on the ground that they have found a good open-


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 ing or have been offered an unusually attractive position and they fear that if they wait to complete their education all the good jobs will be gone. Opportunity knocks but once, they say, and they are convinced that he is now at their door.

Over against these facts, however, are others. Noone has ever been heard to regret, no matter what sort of business or profession he is in, that his preparation was too carefully made, that he put in too much time or too much money on his preliminary education, or did too much studying before he began. On the other hand, there are illustrations without number of men who bemoan the fact all their lives that they gave too little time to preparation and that they made their greatest mistake in not finishing their education. Illustrations innumerable can be found, also, of men who even in middle life got into the professions for which a delayed preparation had been made and who have more than made good.

The boy or the young man, therefore, who hesitates about taking up the profession or the business which he likes best because of the time or the money necessary to prepare for it, or the man who rushes into work ill prepared because he is afraid all the good jobs will be gone if he waits, is making a serious mistake. It is far better to take up a profession we like even late in life than it is to drag out a dull existence in doing the things mechanically which fail to bring out our best efforts. It is better to finish one's preparations as thoroughly


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 both cheeks, and with a big smack on the lips called out, “Good-by, Mother,” and, picking up Annie and Willie as if they were live dolls, tucked one under each arm and dashed out to the magic sleigh. They seemed fairly to fly through the air, and the moon and the stars seemed to dance in the sky as they went on faster and faster. Then they came down nearer and nearer to earth where the lights in the great city gleamed like fireflies far below.

The next thing Annie and Willie knew, they were on the roof of their own home. The next thing they knew, they were down, down the chimney and—there they were right in their own, little beds! The sun-light was streaming into their eyes and their mother was calling, “Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, little sleepy heads!”


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 as possible and trust to the fact that there are always good jobs for the man who is fitted to hold them.

Fitness, interest, enthusiasm, willingness to work, thorough preparation—these are the vital things to be considered by any young fellow in the choice of a profession.


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I am convinced that far too many boys go to college. It is not that I undervalue the worth of a college education—far from it—but too many fellows go who have no appreciation of what a college education means, no special interest, no impelling motive, no desire for what college gives. When I entered college, it was a great event in our country community for a boy to break away from his environment and go off to a higher institution of learning; the neighbors all turned out to see me off. Now everybody goes; it is as common a thing for a boy to go to college as it is for him to take a summer vacation. I often ask the young fellows in our freshman class who come in to see me why they are in college, but I seldom get a very thoughtful or a very specific answer.

I asked Parker the other day. He is a boy of good brains and attractive physique. He has plenty of money, and every chance to do well, but his work is ragged and commonplace, he gets no pleasure out of books, he has no enthusiasm for study; he is quite as likely to fail as to pass when the test of final examinations comes.

"It wasn't because I wanted to come," was his reply. "My brother George finished here two years ago, and he wanted me to come. Father would have been disappointed if I had not done so, so what was I to do?"


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 one's company; thoughts prick one through sleep like mosquitos.

A week after my journey to Wealdstone I went to Kitty to ask her to come for a walk with me and found her stretched on her pillows, holding a review of her underclothing. She refused bitterly and added:

"Be back early. Remember Dr. Gilbert Anderson is coming at half-past four. He's our last hope. And tell that woman she must see him. He says he wants to see everybody concerned." She continued to look wanly at the frail, luminous silks her maid brought her as a speculator who had cornered an article for which there had been no demand might look at his damnably numerous, damnably unprofitable freights. So I went out alone into a soft day, with the dispelled winter lurking above in high dark clouds, under which there ran quick, fresh currents of air and broken shafts of insistent sunshine


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 He showed about as much animation and pleasure as a young fellow might do who was taking a dose of cod liver oil to please his grandmother.

Down the street a block or so was another boy to whom his college course is a source of constant joy. He has been an orphan for many years, he has no resources but those which come from the labor of his own hands. Ever since he was a small boy he had looked forward to being in college as one of the hoped-for but nearly impossible things. It was to him like a dream of fairy-land not likely to come true.

He worked his way through high school, he got a good job the following summer, he won a scholarship by examination, and then he began to feel that possibly his dream might be realized. He is in college now, and he finds it all a delight. He has no money and few pleasures, but he is full of enthusiasm, he laughs at the sacrifices he must make, he counts it a privilege to be able to pursue the subjects which he enjoys, and he knows very well why he came to college. His four years in college will be full of hard toil, but they will bring him constant and keen pleasure.

Too many boys go to college for the same reason that scores of fellows went into the army in 1917—it is the easiest thing to do; it is the thing which a large number of his friends are doing. To others it seems more attractive, perhaps, and more likely to result in a hilariously good time than going to work. There is a generally


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 accepted belief extant, also, that the man who goes to college is likely in some way to have an easier time than the fellow who does not do so. No one seems to appreciate the fact that the man who secures an education is also sure to fall heir to pretty heavy responsibilities.

Now why should a boy go to college? Not to any large extent because other fellows are doing so, though of course, custom is not a thing to be wholly ignored even in following educational practices; not so much as most people think to acquire information or to acquaint oneself with facts, though the accumulation of facts is a necessary detail in any system of education. More than for anything else, one should go to college for the symmetrical training of the mind, for the learning of self-control, for the disciplining of all the faculties, for the development of ideals.

I studied calculus and conic sections while I was in college; I pored over Anglo Saxon texts, and spent a considerable time in the chemical laboratory working out experiments and developing formulas. Most of these things I have forgotten, and few if any of them have I had any occasion to use in the routine business which has engaged my attention since I left college. I do not for this reason, however, in any way underestimate the permanent value of these subjects to me. They developed my brain, they caused me to think, they helped me to draw conclusions quickly and gave me a broader


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 “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” they both shouted, as they bounced out of bed and rushed for their stockings which were fairly bulging with toys, and Annie was soon hugging and kissing a new dolly while Willie was blowing a new trumpet. In the other room stood a large Christmas tree which had come from the Christmastree forest.

“Oh, we know where these toys came from,” said Willie. “They came from the garden of toys, for we visited Santa Claus Land last night.”

Now, to-night, when you go to bed, close your eyes tightly and go to sleep and I am sure you too can pay a visit to Santa Claus Land.

Merry Christmas!


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 and clearer outlook on life, and these powers have helped me every day of my life since, in every relation which I have borne to my fellow men. It is seldom that I have needed the specific information which I derived from these subjects, but all through the years I have depended upon the training which I thus received. It is this training and discipline which in my mind is the most valuable thing the college gives.

There are several sorts of men who should not go to college. The man who does not like to study, who finds no real pleasure in books, to whom the incidental things of college are the main consideration, has little business in college. I was talking to Rogers about his work this quarter. He is doing poorly, he can not get up in the morning, he finds class attendance irksome, and books and study bore him.

"If I can not make the ball team," he confessed to me, "there is little use of my staying in college. I'd a lot rather hold down the second sack than be elected to Phi Beta Kappa."

The facts are, however, that there's a slim chance of his attaining either distinction, for he will not be allowed to play ball at all if he doesn't carry his studies, and the likelihood of his making Phi Beta Kappa is about as remote as the establishment of an aëroplane route to Mars.

"You'd better apply for admission to one of the minor leagues," I advised him, "college is no place for you."

There are those who look upon college as a kind of


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 resting place between youth and manhood where one forms associations only, or absorbs a few facts or a little culture. They do not for a moment consider it a place where a young fellow should get down to business and work hard, but rather a place of leisure, or recreation, a place to dream and smoke, and sleep late in the morning, and talk nonsense to pretty girls while one is waiting for the real work of life to begin. It is this sort of man who yawns or turns up his nose when the subject of scholarship is introduced. He doesn't want to get high grades, not he. He is going to have to go to work quite soon enough, he declares, so why spoil the best years of one's life by digging.

Peters was that sort. He could prove by statistics gathered from all kinds of, to him at least, reliable sources that the commonplace man in his studies in college always develops later into a captain of finance or a world leader. He spent most of his time cultivating an effective shot at billiards or sitting in front of the fire smoking cigarettes and outlining to the other fellows who would listen to him the business and social conquests he expected to make when his college career should close. Unfortunately it closed somewhat sooner than he anticipated, for the faculty took another view of things than that held by Peters, and dropped him at the end of his sophomore year for poor scholarship. Peters is only one of the many illustrations I have known of the fact that there isn't much place in college for the loafer, or for the man who is trying only to pick up a little social experience or to acquire a little


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 intellectual polish without labor, before he gets into the real hustle of life.

There are a few boys undoubtedly who finish high school whose mental equipment is not quite adequate to the work of college, who are not natural students, who are better fitted for a trade than for a profession, and who would seldom have had their minds turned toward a college course were it not for the fact that so many of their mates were continuing their education beyond the high school. The number of these is not large, possibly, but it is sufficiently in evidence for a boy seriously to ask himself the question, "Am I mentally fitted to take up a college course?"

A good many boys can not afford to go to college. Sometimes home duties are arduous and can not be shirked, and though, if he followed his own personal desires, he would go on with his education, he realizes that he is under obligation to make the sacrifice. Sometimes the boy could get away, but there is no money available. The old theory was that any boy who had the desire for an education could always meet his college expenses in some way through manual labor. In fact there are many otherwise sensible people still who imagine that the self-supporting student in college is not only better off than other boys but'is always near the head of the class. I have even known fathers who were quite able to pay the expenses of their sons in college who refused to do so because they exaggerated and idealized the intellectual advantages of


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 being poor. There is always to substantiate their theory, the story of Webster setting off to Dartmouth with his one pair of homespun trousers—later ruined by the rain—and a bag of potatoes for his subsistence. They do not suspect how much pain and suffering he would have been spared, how much better he might have done, had he been properly clothed and decently fed.

The real facts are that the self-supporting student in college misses a tremendous lot usually of what one should get from college, and in a good many instances fails entirely.

"I know absolutely nothing of what real college life is," a junior said to me only a few days ago. "I've earned my own living ever since I entered, and I've had my nose on the grindstone ever since I struck the campus. I sometimes wonder if it pays."

Such a student picks up an inadequate living, and he sometimes falls down on his final examinations. The reason is perfectly evident. The college course, if it is well carried, requires the most of a man's time. The self-supporting student is attempting two tasks either of which have ordinarily been considered sufficient to occupy a man's whole time and energy.

There is also extant another notion to the effect that in a college town it is easier to live on nothing or to pick up a good job than in any other place. Many a young fellow gravitates to a college town thinking he can get work there more readily than in any other place. Quite the contrary


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 is true. The average college town is the most expensive place to live one can find, and the fact that there are always hundreds of young fellows hunting for something to do to eke out an inadequate income, makes the opportunity for lucrative employment quite uncertain.

There are men, of course, in every college who earn all their living and who do well in their studies, but their number is small. Such men usually have some peculiar talent, such as the ability to play a musical instrument well, for instance, which enables them to earn a considerable amount of money in brief periods of time. I have spoken to a boy since I began to write this article who is earning his expenses through college, and he tells me that during the past week he has earned $39.00 by playing the piano in an orchestra for four evenings. There are not many like him, however.

The man who works his way in college must have concentration and a quick, alert mind which will enable him to get his lessons in a short time. He must be resourceful, and let his head help his hands in earning his living. He must be physically strong and robust, for often he will need to get on for a time on less sleep than the average man, or his sleeping hours, at least, will be interrupted or irregular. He will have to be capable of sacrifice, for the man without money can have few of the social pleasures which fill so much of the leisure time of the college man. He can never afford to be an athlete, for participation in athletics will take up all his leisure time and leave


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 him no opportunity to earn his living. He should not be too sensitive or given to despondent spells, for his work will not always be pleasant or to his liking. He will often have to wait on his inferiors and say nothing when they treat him with condescension. I should never advise a boy to attempt to earn his living in college if he does not have to do so; often I think it is better to delay entrance to college until a respectable sum has been saved, and sometimes I am sure it is better not to go to college at all than to make the sacrifices and to do the worse than commonplace work which many self-supporting students find it impossible to avoid. I should rather enter college at twenty-two and do good work than to graduate at the same age and leave behind me a record that was not to my credit.

The boy who is always looking for practical things, who does not want to study anything that fails to reveal at once its practical application or its immediate availability as a money getter, is better off usually out of college than in. I see such men every day. They are never able to "see any use" in Latin, or philosophy, or literature; they are constantly objecting because certain courses in which they are-registered are not what they thought they would be; they are not getting anything out of them, they say, quite likely because they are putting less into them themselves. Such men see very little in a college course, and for them in fact there probably is little, for though the college man is very likely to earn money more readily


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 because of his college training than other men, the fellow who goes to college solely because he thinks it will prove the readiest means to an easy and profitable job, might better stay at home.

The choice of a college is a subject which should be given some attention. The question is one often decided by sentiment, by prejudice, from practical considerations and from a thousand and one things sometimes trifling in themselves. The boy who goes to college in his home town is usually making a mistake. The only advantage such a young fellow derives is a financial one. It is generally cheaper to live at home than away from home, and, when the matter of finances is a vital one, it is better for a boy to go to college in his home town than not to go at all. I have never, except for financial reasons, advised any parents to move to a college town in order that they might look after and care for their sons while they were undergraduates in college, and I do not now recall the names of any sons who were strengthened by having their parents with them during the college course.

The boy living at home is usually less independent, less aggressive, possesses less initiative than the one who is thrown out upon his own resources to fight his own battles, to meet his own temptations, and to settle his own difficulties. The college practically always throws about him sufficient restraint to keep him from going on the rocks, and yet leaves him free enough to develop independence. If he is at home, his father, or especially his


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 mother, undertakes to decide for him in most critical emergencies and, though the judgment of the older person is likely to be more dependable than that of the younger, there is no training for the boy in depending upon his elders' judgment.

The boy from the west will often gain an advantage by going to an eastern institution for his education. Not that he will be better taught there, or live in a more refined or a rarer intellectual atmosphere, but because he will meet different sorts of people, he will need to adjust himself to quite different conditions from those to which he has been used, and he will get a broader outlook upon life. Such an experience will not be at all likely to make him dissatisfied with his own particular part of the country, but on the contrary will cause him to value it more highly. When I go to the mountains I always come back to the prairies with a sense of joy and satisfaction.

For this reason the New Englander or the Southerner would often be immeasurably benefited by taking his college training in the west. It would modify his provincialism, it would disabuse his mind of the idea that the most of the United States lies east of the Hudson river or south of Mason and Dixon's line, it would humanize him and teach him democracy, and, best of all, if he chooses his college wisely, it would give him as excellent a training as he could get anywhere else in the country, and often at considerably less expense.

Each college has its own traditions, its own atmosphere,


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 its own ideals and character. It is well worth while looking into these things in choosing a college. It is almost as necessary to avoid incompatibility of tastes in choosing a college as it is in choosing a wife. There is the conservative college and the liberal; the college in a country town and the country town about a college; there is the college in a city and the college near one. Whether one likes one sort of situation or another depends very much upon the individual himself.

The subject of the large institution versus the small one has been much discussed. I have been a student in a large institution where I knew nobody and where nobody had the slightest curiosity or desire to know me; I have been a teacher in a small institution which grew during my term of service to one of the largest universities in the country. Each type of college has its own advantages.

The main argument in support of the small college as opposed to the big university is about the same as that offered in defense of the country town as contrasted with the city. The small college is more democratic, perhaps. Students in it come more closely into touch with the older members of the faculty and with each other. The number of extra-curriculum activities does not vary materially from those in the larger institution, and, since the enrollment of students is small, the competition for student honors is very much less keen. While in a big institution there might easily be one thousand students in the senior or junior class, in the small college there would not be one


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 tenth as many. There is more chance, therefore, in the small college for the shy, unaggressive, commonplace man to gain prominence than in the larger one. There is, perhaps, more general comradeship, brotherly feeling, the life is more like home life, though the number of men whom one can know in a small college is not greater if so great as is possible in a big university outside of a great city.

The larger institution makes the stronger appeal to the man with initiative because it offers to him greater possibilities. To be manager or editor of a great college daily, to be captain of an athletic team whose victories are heralded from New York to San Francisco, to be president of a student organization in which there are five thousand votes to be considered, makes a strong appeal to the ambitious student. The opportunity, too, to touch elbows with men from all over the world, such men as one finds in a big university, is no small matter. The student in any large American university has a chance to know men from almost every civilized country in the world. The variety of interests, also, in the big institution is worth considering. I count it as one of the most valuable experiences of my college course, that though I was primarily interested in languages and literature while I was an undergraduate, yet I had daily associations with engineers and chemists, with prep-medics and mathematicians, and that, without consciously doing so, I acquired a considerable body of information and grew interested in a thousand incidental things through this association. One


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 is more alone in a big institution, one has more freedom, one must more often fight single-handed one's own battles. There is more chance of being lost in the crowd and more honor if one rises above it.

One would suppose, if he did not know otherwise, that a freshman in college barring the matter of a few months difference in age, is quite similar to a senior in high school, but whoever assumed such a premise would be far from the truth. One can always tell a freshman at college, just as, with few exceptions, one can tell an American college man when he sees him whether in Duluth or Singapore. The freshman may be as self-possessed as possible; he may dress as he chooses; he may ask no foolish questions or show no lack of familiarity with the college customs; but he is a marked man the moment he sets foot on the campus. Whether he comes from South Hadley, Massachusetts, or a country town in Kansas with one general store and a post office, it makes little difference, he can not conceal the fact that he is a newcomer beginning his experience in college. He is like the American in Paris, or Rotterdam, who thinks that if he does not speak no one will know him for a foreigner, but who is spotted a block away by every small boy, and fakir, on the street.

No one knows how he tells a freshman—it is probably a matter of intuition. But the freshman learns rapidly to adapt himself to the new situation; he picks up at once the ways of the campus; by Thanksgiving he seems like an old settler, and by the end of the year he is ready to


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 meet incoming freshmen with unerring recognition and condescension. Sometimes he adapts himself too incompletely to his new environment. It is as much a fault to cling rigidly to one's home manners and habits and dress as it is to throw these to the winds and adopt the extremes of college customs and fads. In the unimportant things of college life it is well for the freshman to keep his eyes open and to "do as the Romans do"; it is not wise for him, however, on his return home at Thanksgiving to attempt to reproduce and to establish the customs of Rome in his home community.

The differences between high school and college are marked. The methods of work and the ways of living are quite different from those in high school—quite different in fact, from what the boy thinks they are. It is not surprising that a high school boy's idea of college life is an erroneous one. What he knows of college he has most frequently gained from the exaggerated accounts of student escapades which he has seen in the newspapers, or from the stories which he has heard related by his big brother or a local athlete who has returned home from the scenes of his scholastic triumphs. Such tales are usually unhampered by facts, and concern themselves more with the unusual and the unimportant things of college than with its real work. If he has visited college at all it has more than likely been at the time of an important athletic contest, or of an interscholastic meet, when nobody works, or talks of work, and when the main thing under consider-


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 ation is the athletic victory, and perhaps the celebration which follows. As he saw college then, it was a collection of carefree young fellows with little to do but to enjoy themselves, and perhaps occasionally, if nothing more important prevented, to attend a few lectures. In point of fact college life is a strenuous life, where every man should be about his own business seriously and continuously. If one is to get on well in college, or in life for that matter, the sooner one recognizes this fact and adapts himself to the situation the better. Failure in college comes from a failure to recognize the fact that the aims of the college are different from those of the high school, that the amount of work required is greater, and that the methods of doing it must, also, be different. A man must adjust himself to these changed conditions if he would get on.

The high school boy has seldom worked independently. He knew that if his work were not done when it should be, his teacher would remind him of the fact. When he was in difficulty there was some one to get him out. Whatever he did, or thought, was somewhat under the supervision of someone older or more experienced than himself. He judged of his success, or his progress, by what these people said of him or to him. In college it is different. Everyone must look after himself; much of his training consists in his doing so. If he doesn't hustle, no one is likely at once to call his attention to the fact.

The problem of living has not materially concerned a freshman before he comes to college. He has lived at


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 home, and his comings and goings have been under the direction of the older members of the household. Most of his wants have been provided for without much thought or attention on his part. Mother has darned his stockings and picked out his neckties, and father has paid the bills. This matter of paying the bills is not to be ignored. The college man will get on more happily, he will more readily learn business methods, and he will live comfortably on a smaller amount if he has a stipulated monthly allowance. It ought to be sufficient to enable him to live comfortably, and it ought not to be so much as to necessitate wasting his time in order to spend it. The most discontented students about college and those who give college officers most concern are the students who have too little money to spend and those who have too much.

The habits of the boy going to college are as much the result of the conventions and customs of the community in which he has been brought up as of his own tendencies or inclinations. If he learned to dance it was because all the fellows did, if he went to church regularly, that was no necessary indication that he was religiously inclined; it was simply the custom. When he needed anything he asked for it without knowing much as to what it cost or where it came from. His comings and goings were somewhat supervised.

At college when his study program is decided upon, the disposal of his time is largely in his own hands. He may study one thing or another, or he need not study at all.


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 He may read in the library, or walk down town, or watch the team practicing on the athletic field; there is no one to call him to account. If he attends regularly upon classes, and shows a reasonable intelligence regarding his studies, he may employ his time as he pleases. He may choose his own companions, and act with absolute independence. There is a delightful freedom in all this which is sometimes deceiving. He may assume that since no one calls him to account today there will be no reckoning tomorrow, but in this he is mistaken, for he is in reality being looked after pretty carefully. His time is his own, but it is his own to use wisely, and if he fails in this regard, he will suffer in the final reckoning, and that reckoning comes all too soon.

On entering college every freshman will have some definite problems to face in a more personal way than they have ever before been presented to him. In most cases he has previously been familiar more or less closely with all the temptations which are to be found in college, but at home he has often been shielded from them—they have been more a name than a reality to him. Sooner or later every man must meet temptation face to face and say yes or no to its proposals. To many a young fellow the critical time comes at about the age when he goes to college. For this the college is in no way responsible, though many conscientious men have tried to hang the blame there.

I should not feel that I was quite doing my duty if I did


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 not say a word about the temptations peculiar to young men at the age when they enter college, and which in college, perhaps, are touched up with peculiar allurements and attractions. It is true that a large majority of young men are little affected by these temptations and still fewer are permanently injured by them, but those who fail in college do so usually not from inability to do the work, but because they are led away by these other things.

May I speak in a more personal and direct way to the boy entering college? First of all there is the habit of loafing. Before you leave the train which is carrying you to your college town, sometimes unfortunately even before you are out of high school, you will have made engagements for days and weeks in advance which will often seriously interfere with the real work of college. There is the fraternity rushing, and the open grate fire, and the pipe, and the vaudeville show, and the newfound friend, and the moon smiling down and inviting you out to stroll, and all these pleading in the strongest terms for self-indulgence, and self-gratification. There are a thousand other new and fascinating things which you may call by any name you please, but which after all are only other names for loafing. If you get into the habit of dawdling away your time, you can conjure up a hundred apparently good excuses for not studying, and for not going to class.

Perhaps one of the main reasons why it all seems so attractive and so safe is because the days are so long,


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 and the time of final reckoning so far ahead and youth is so optimistic. I seldom call a man for procrastination and neglect of duty who does not tell me that it had been his serious intention to see me that day even if I had not called him, and I presume he is often telling the truth. I seldom talk to a loafer who has not promised himself, even before I urge him to get down to serious work, that he will stop loafing at once. The loafer has a sensitive conscience.

"I was coming in to see you today even if you had not called me," Walsh said to me this morning. "I know what you're going to say; I'm a loafer."

Loafing is a habit easily learned and hard to break, and it ruins more college careers at the very outset than does any other vice.

Then you should have a regular time for going to work each evening. You should not be turned from the habit by alluring invitations to get into card games, or to stand around the piano and develop your taste for poor music, or to waste the evening in attendance upon a low-class vaudeville show, or a racy moving picture performance, or even to sit in front of the fire and talk about politics or the girls with your room-mate. When the time comes for study, you should go to it as if you liked it, and do this six days in the week and three or four hours a day. If you do this for a month or two there will be little likelihood of your developing into a chronic loafer. I have said all of this knowing that every healthy young fellow