d and religious life, which they
may give or lend, as occasion offers, to promising boys and girls.
Such books will, at least, make their readers think, and God's grace
frequently acts through the medium of the written or spoken word.

_Creighton University, Omaha,
Easter Sunday, 1914._

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I Getting a Start
II Aiming High
III The State of Perfection
IV Who Are Invited?
V Does Christ Want Me?
VI I Feel No Attraction
VII Suppose I Make a Mistake?
VIII The World Needs Me
IX Must I Accept the Invitation?
X I Am Too Young
XI The Priesthood
XII The Teacher's Aureole
XIII Showing the Way
XIV The Parents' Part
XV A Parting Word

CHAPTER I

GETTING A START

Youth is the dream time of life. It views the world through the prism
of fancy, tinting all with rainbow colors. It lives in a creation of
its own, where it rules with magic wand, conjuring into its realm the
beautiful, the heroic and the magnificent, and banishing only the
prosaic and commonplace. To the youthful dreamer, every ruler is
all-powerful, every soldier brave, every fire-fighter a hero, and every
editor a wizard, at whose nod the news of the world flies to the huge
cylinder presses, and then flutters away in white-winged sheets
through town and country.

But gradually, the stern realities of life forcing themselves on the
maturing mind, it realizes that it must choose from the various
activities that make up the sum of human existence. The thoughtful boy
and girl then begin to ask the question, "What shall I be?" or "What
shall I do?" The various walks of life spread out before them like a
maze of tracks in a railway station, all leading away in dwindling
perspective to the witching land of the unknown.

An ambitious boy views with delight the various professions, and
pictures to himself in turn the great deeds and triumphs of the
soldier, the statesman, the lawyer, the physician, the architect, and
finally perhaps the electrician, who plays with the lightning and
harnesses it to the ever-extending service of mankind. All these are
votaries of noble avocations, and he who excels in any one of them is
a hero, and a benefactor of his kind. Every occupation which is useful
to the human race, which contributes to the sum of man's comfort and
happiness, is laudable and worthy an intelligent being. St. Paul was a
tent-maker by trade, and he gloried in the fact that