etter things in the future, and yet
attempting to succeed in a business which requires care, infinite pains
and precautions. Thoughtless, impulsive, frivolous people are always
trying to do work requiring careful, plodding, painstaking, methodical
ways; while thoughtful, philosophic, and deliberate people oftentimes find
themselves distressed, bewildered, and inefficient in the hurly-burly of
some swift-moving vocation.

SOME OTHER MISFITS

Mild, easy-going, timid, self-conscious men we frequently find in
vocations which require aggressiveness, courage, fighting ability,
self-confidence, and a considerable amount of hard-headed brutality. On
the other hand, we sometimes find the fighting man in a profession which
is considered to be quiet and peaceable.

Similarly, we have often seen lawyers, whose profession requires of them a
good deal of combativeness, shrewdness, a certain degree of skepticism,
and a large amount of hard-headed determination to win, no matter what the
cost, handicapped by extreme sensitiveness, sympathy, generosity,
non-resistance, credulity, humility, and self-consciousness. Physically,
they were wonderfully capable of success as lawyers. Intellectually, they,
perhaps, were even better fitted for the profession than many of their
brothers in the legal fraternity. But, emotionally, they were absolutely
unfit for the competition, the contest, the necessity for combat and
severity in the practice of law.

Contrawise, we have often seen hard-headed, shrewd, skeptical, grasping,
unprincipled, aggressive, fighting men in professions where they did not
belong; in professions requiring sympathy, credulity, kindness, tact,
generosity, unselfishness, and other such qualities. We have not, in this
chapter, outlined all of the different classes of misfits. That would be
impossible. We have, however, referred to the most common of them.
Probably nine-tenths of all the misfits which have come under our
observation could be classified under one or more of the heads we have
outlined in the foregoing chapter.

CHAPTER IV

THE PHYSICALLY FRAIL

Some years ago there came into our offices in Boston a young man
twenty-six years of age. He was about medium height, with keen,
intelligent face, fine skin, fine hair, delicately modeled features,
refined looking hands, and small, well-shaped feet.

He was inexpensively, but neatly, dressed, and, while somewhat diffident,
was courteous, affable, and respect