and training.
Hundreds of men and women come to us, only to find that they have started
in the wrong work and have remained in it so long that a change to their
true vocation is practically impossible. They have assumed
responsibilities which they cannot shirk. The education and training
needed would take too long and would cost too much. Yet many have toiled
away at night and in odd moments on correspondence courses or in night
schools, and have thus, finally, won their way to their rightful places in
the work of the world. But at what a cost!

It is of the highest importance that every individual should learn as
early as possible in life what career he is best fitted to undertake.
Every year spent in mistaken preparation or uncongenial employment makes
proper training more expensive and more difficult. There are many arts
which, perhaps, cannot be learned properly after one has reached maturity.
It is said that no one has ever become a great violinist who did not begin
his study of the instrument before the age of twelve. However that may be,
psychologists and anatomists agree in informing us that the brain of a
human being is exceedingly plastic in childhood, and that it gradually
grows more and more impervious to impressions and changes as the
individual matures. Sad, indeed, is the case, therefore, of the individual
who waits to learn what his vocational fitness is until he is fully mature
and is, perhaps, loaded up with the cares and responsibilities of a
family, and cannot take either the time or the money to secure an
education which his natural aptitude and his opportunities demand.

DEFICIENT SELF-CONFIDENCE

Many men remain in uncongenial occupations because they lack confidence in
themselves. This is distressingly common. Everywhere we find men and women
occupying humble positions, doing some obscure work, perhaps actually
frittering away their time upon trifles and mere details, doing something
which does not require accuracy, care, responsibility, or talent, merely
for fear they may not be able to succeed in a career for which they are
eminently fitted.

On one occasion a young man of the most undoubted dramatic talent and
oratorical ability sought us for counsel. "I have always felt," he said,
"a strong inner urge, sometimes almost irresistible, to go upon the
platform or the stage. But, because I have lacked confidence in myself, I
have always, at the last moment, drawn back. The result is that to-day