h terror is extremely distressing, and to whip a child when you are
angry is brutal. Many children never quite forget or forgive a parent
or teacher for this cruelty.

Parents, teachers, friends often put a serious stumbling-block in the
way of a youth by suggesting that he ought to study for the ministry,
or the law; to be a physician, an engineer, or enter some other
profession or business for which he may be totally unfitted. I know a
man whose career was nearly ruined by the suggestion of his grandmother
when he was a child that she would educate him for the church, and that
it was her wish for him to become a clergyman.

It was not that she saw in the little child any fitness for this holy
office, but because _she wanted a clergyman in the family_, and she
often reminded him that he must not disappoint her. The boy, who
idolized his grandmother, pondered this thought until he became a young
man. The idea possessed him so strongly that every time he tried to
make a choice of a career the picture of a clergyman rushed first to
his mind, and, although he could see no real reason why he should
become a clergyman, the suggestion that he ought to worked like leaven
in his nature and kept him from making any other choice until too late
to enable him to succeed to any great extent.

I know a most brilliant and marvelously fascinating woman who is
extremely ambitious to make a name for herself, but she is almost
totally lacking in her ability to apply herself, even in the line where
her talent is greatly marked. She seems to be abundantly endowed in
every faculty and quality except this. Now, if her parents had known
the secret of correcting mental deficiencies, building up weak
faculties, this girl could have been so trained that she would probably
have had a great career and made a world-wide name for herself.

I have in mind another woman, a most brilliant linguist, who speaks
fluently seven languages. She is a most fascinating conversationalist
and impresses one as having read everything, but, although in good
health, she is an object of charity to-day, simply because she has
never developed her practical faculties at all, and this because she
was never trained to work, to depend upon herself even in little things
when she was a child. She was fond of her books, was a most brilliant
scholar, but never learned to be practical or to do anything herself.
Her self-reliance and independence were never developed.