in the very midst of a reticent and often skeptical period
there comes, through the awakened vocational interest, an inlet into the
soul of youth. No religious inquisitor or evangelistic brigand could
have forced an entrance, but lo, all at once the doors are opened from
within and examination is invited. It is invited because the boy wishes
to know what manner of person he is and for what pursuit he is or may be
fitted. When once this issue is on and one is honored as counselor and
friend, the moral honesty and eagerness of youth, the thoroughgoing
confession on all the personal and moral phases of the problem in hand
are enough to move and humble the heart of any pastor. Such conference
solemnizes and reassures the worker with boys, while to have spent no
time as an invited and reverent guest within this sacred precinct is to
fail of a priesthood that is profoundly beautiful.

Several experiences with both individuals and groups are fresh in mind
at this writing. On one occasion a guild of working boys in later
adolescence were living together in a church fraternity house, and it
was their custom on one evening of each week to have some prominent man
as guest at dinner and to hear an informal address from him after the
meal. It chanced that on the list of guests there was, in addition to
the mayor of their city and a well-known bishop of the Episcopal church,
the manager of one of the greatest automobile factories in America. On
the occasion on which this captain of industry spoke, he told in simple
fashion his own experience in search of a vocation.

It was of a kind very common in our country: early privation, put to
work at thirteen, an attempt to keep him in an office when he longed to
have hold of the tools in the shop. In time his request was granted.
While he worked he observed and studied the organization of the shop and
the progression of the raw material to the finished product. Having
mastered the method he left this shop and hired in another, and then in
due time in still another shop, much to the disgust of his friends. But
in reply to their warning that "a rolling stone gathers no moss" he said
that that was not his aim. As a result of faithfully following his bent
he was ready to respond to the great demand for men to organize and run
bicycle factories, and when that demand was followed by the much
greater need of doing a similar work in the manufacture of automobiles
he was chosen for the very respons