ion" writers in reporting, their
graduates would plant their weary feet far more readily than they do
now when they come to a great city and beseech a busy editor to give
them a chance.

Almost anything can be done with the plastic mind. But not always. It
is the better part of wisdom for proud parents to discover just what
their offspring's facility amounts to before spending money on an art
or a musical education, for instance. I had a painful experience, and
no doubt it has been duplicated a thousand times, for Europe before
the war was full of girls (many living on next to nothing) who were
studying "art" or "voice culture," with neither the order of endowment
nor the propelling brain-power to justify the sacrifice of their
parents or the waste of their own time.

Some years ago, finding that a young relative, who was just finishing
her school course, drew and painted in water colors with quite a
notable facility, and the family for generations having manifested
talents in one way or another, I decided to take her abroad and train
her faculty that she might be spared the humiliation of dependence,
nor feel a natural historic inclination to marry the first man who
offered her an alternative dependence; and at the same time be enabled
to support herself in a wholly congenial way. I did not delude myself
with the notion that she was a genius, but I thought it likely she
would become apt in illustrating, and I knew that I could throw any
amount of work in her way, or secure her a position in the art
department of some magazine.

I took her to the European city where I was then living and put her in
the best of its art schools. To make a long story short, after I had
expended some five thousand dollars on her, including traveling
expenses and other incidentals, the net result was an elongated thumb.
I was forced to the conclusion that she had not an atom of real
talent, merely the treacherous American facility. Moreover, she lost
all her interest in "art" when it meant hard work and persistent
application. I was wondering what on earth I was to do with her when
she solved the problem herself. She announced with unusual decision
that she wanted to be a nurse, had always wanted to be a nurse (she
had never mentioned the aspiration to me) and that nothing else
interested her. Her mother had been an invalid; one way or another she
had seen a good deal of illness.

Accordingly I sent her back to this country and entered