d and
unnatural existence in many a merchant's office because their best
faculties were undeveloped during the early years of schooling.
Mathematicians, philosophers, even poets, are tied to trade or to some
equally unsuitable occupation. Scores of so-called literary men ought to
be calculating percentages or selling dry goods; and no doubt there are
shop-assistants and stock-jobbers who might, if led into the path of
culture, have become creditable authors and journalists.

This is neither joke nor satire. It is sober earnest, as many observant
readers will readily testify. The loss is not only to the individual, it
is to society at large, and to the whole world. No one will deny the
fact; but to how many will it occur that such anomalies cannot be the
outcome of natural development and progress, but that they must be
directly or indirectly attributable to some artificial cause?

It is the great difficulty against which all human advancement has to
contend, that people can rarely be brought to question principles which
have become a part and parcel of their everyday existence. There are
plenty of individuals who are ready to tinker with existing
institutions, and who erroneously dignify that process by the name of
reform. But nothing is more despairing than the effort to convince
conventionally brought up people that some cherished convention, with
which the world has put up for an indefinite period, is founded upon
fallacy, and ought to be cast out root and branch.

Even in the United States, where far greater efforts are made to
encourage individuality in the schools and colleges than is the case
with the countries of the Old World, people are not much better
distributed amongst the various professions and occupations than they
are here. I have made inquiries amongst Americans of wide experience and
observation, and have learnt that nothing is more common in the States
than to find individuals brought up to exercise functions for which they
are wholly unfitted by natural capacity and inclination.

An instance was given me, by an American friend, of a boy who spent all
his leisure in constructing clever little mechanical contrivances, in
running miniature locomotives, and in setting up electric appliances of
one kind and another. One day the youth's father came to him and said:
'I don't know what to make of B----. Could you find him a place in a
wholesale merchant's office?' When it was pointed out to the parent th