has become
may be guessed by the fact that a fine, intelligent man may spend four
years in preparatory school, four years in college, and three years in a
theological seminary, may acquire twenty-five years of successful
experience, and still receive for his services only $500 a year. Moreover,
he is expected to contribute to the cause not only all his own time and
talent, but also the services of his wife and children. This, of course,
is pretty close to the minimum salary, but the great majority of
ecclesiastical salaries range very low--nor have they responded to the
increase in the cost of living.

After all, the question is not one of the over-crowding of a profession,
but of fitness for success in it. No matter how many may be seeking
careers in any profession, the great majority are mediocre or worse, and
the man with unusual aptitude and ability to work and work hard easily
outstrips his fellows and finds both fame and fortune. The trouble is that
the lure of the professions takes thousands of men into them who are
better fitted for business, for mechanics, for agriculture, and for other
vocations.

SUCCESSFUL, BUT NOT SATISFIED

Because they have the capacity to work hard, because they are
conscientious and because they have some ordinary intellect and common
sense, many men make a fair success in medicine, in the law, in the
ministry, as college professors, as engineers, or in some other
profession. All through their lives, however, they have the feeling that
they are not doing their best work, that they would be better off, better
satisfied, and happier if engaged in some other vocation. How well every
true man knows that it is not enough to have kept the wolf from the door,
it is not enough even to have piled up a little ahead. Every man of red
blood and backbone wants to do his best work, wants to do work that he
loves, work into which he can throw himself with heart and soul and with
all his mind and strength. Merely to muddle through with some
half-detested work, not making an utter failure of it, is no satisfaction
when the day's work is done. Not only the man himself, but all of us, lose
when he who might have been a great manufacturer and organizer of
industry fritters away his life and his talents as a "pretty good doctor"
or a "fair sort of lawyer."

Judge Elbert H. Gary was far from being a failure as a lawyer. Yet his
life might have been a failure in the law in comparison to what he has
acco