me_ and nobody else, and I will
live accordingly. I will go it alone."

"I wish John had not married so young," said a woman of wealth,
fashion, and brilliant talents in speaking of her son. "Why, how old
was he?" asked her friend. "Twenty-five," said she; "he ought to have
waited ten years longer." "I think not," was the response of the
world-wise man with whom she was conversing. "If he got a good wife he
was in great luck that he did not wait longer." "No," persisted the
mother, "he ought to have taken more time 'to look around.' These
early marriages interfere with a young man's career."

This fragment of a real conversation, which is typical of numberless
others like it, reveals the false and shallow philosophy which, if it
becomes our code of national living, will make the lives of our young
people abnormal and our twentieth century civilization artificial and
neurotic. Even now too many people are thinking about a "career."
Mothers are talking about "careers" for their sons. Young men are
dreaming of their "careers."

It is assumed that a young man can "carve out his career" if his
attention is not distracted and his powers are not diminished by a
wife and children whom he must feed, clothe, and consider. The icy
selfishness of this hypothesis of life ought to be enough to reject it
without argument. Who is any man, that he should have a "career"? and
what does a "career" amount to, anyway? What is it for? Fame? Surely
not, because

"Imperious Caesar dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away,"

says Shakespeare. And Shakespeare ought to know; he is not quite three
centuries dead, and even now the world is sadly confused as to
whether he wrote Shakespeare. "Career!" Let your "career" grow out of
the right living of your life--not the living of your life grow out of
your "career." "Don't get the cart before the horse."

Is it to accomplish some good thing for humanity that you want this
"career," which is to keep you single until you are too old to be
interesting? Very well. Just what is it that you expect to do with
these self-centered and single years during which you intend so to
help the race? If you cannot tell, you are "down and out" on that
score.

And, besides, you will find that the enormous majority of men who by
their service have uplifted or enriched humanity have been men enough
to lead the natural life. They have been men who have founded homes.
And how can you