CHOOSING A VOCATION

FOR some years serious students of pedagogy have complained that in the two most important decisions of a man's life, choosing a wife and choosing a vocation, young men are often led by mere chance. They drift into marriage; they drift into a job. This ought not to be. As for marriage, that can wait. But serious students of pedagogy have been much concerned about the matter of vocation; they have grieved about it; they have set out to remedy it. They have instituted courses of vocational training; they have created vocational advisers.

Meeting with some encouragement in the colleges, they have extended the system downward to the high schools. It is a poor high school nowadays that does not boast a vocational adviser. They have extended the system downward to the grades, down almost to the kindergarten. "The child,' I quote from any recent book on pedagogy, 'should in his earliest years be urged to choose his future vocation in life and should commence definite preparation for that vocation. The choice cannot be made too early.' Children in the kindergarten and in the lower grades are taken about by their teacher to view men engaged in various occupations and are asked to make choice of their life's work. Says the teacher: 'Children, here is a carpenter. He wears pretty blue overalls and he has a shiny saw and a hammer and he builds houses. How many of you would like to be carpenters when you grow up?' Then all the boys who decide that they want to be carpenters

when they grow up learn in school how many feet of lumber it will take to build a workbench and how much twenty-four pounds of nails at five cents a pound will cost. And the fathers and mothers come to visit the school and go away rejoicing that education is now so practical and that their sons are being so well fitted for a life work. And we read in the books written by those serious students of pedagogy that the boys go on through the years still yearning to be carpenters and still figuring with boards and nails and writing paragraphs about building houses, and finally they leave school all ready to become carpenters. You understand, of course, that at the same time their friends, who years ago made their vocational choices, are being likewise educated, each along the line of his own vocational needs. And the beauty of the whole scheme is that absolutely no education at all is wasted.

How does it actually work out? Well, William, a young man in whom I have for years taken a particular interest, has for some months past been concerned about his future calling. William, in accord with the best pedagogic principles, chose his vocation early in life. Up to last year, in common with many of his friends and, I think, most of his contemporaries, he cherished the hope of becoming a fireman. The life of adventure appeals to youth. And William was only ten. Suddenly, last winter, he changed his mind. As he was only ten, perhaps that was to have been expected. Serious students of pedagogy, however, fail to recognize such a possibility. One day last winter William announced

to his family that he had given up the hope of becoming a fireman and had decided instead to become a cartoonist. I have the feeling that a visit to the movies preceded this important decision. I know that next day he laboriously copied a newspaper cartoon entitled 'Have you talent?' and sent it off to a correspondence school in the Middle West. I know that by return mail he received a personal letter from the president of the school congratulating him upon his work, assuring him that it revealed a talent amounting almost to genius, and urging him to take advantage of a special offer and enroll at once for the course. I know, too, that he wished to leave school and embark at once upon his career, and that his family had real difficulty in persuading him to delay for a few years. That was in January. Perhaps his family were unwise to dampen his ardor. For when I talked with him in July he had already lost his first enthusiasm for cartooning. But he had a new idea in his head. He still planned, he told me, to become a cartoonist at some time in the future and make big money (See the prospectus), but he had a scheme for making even bigger money. He was now intending to be a cartoonist on week days and a church organist on Sundays, thus combining two well-paying professions which he felt would dovetail together nicely.

In September, William announced that he had made another and a final choice. And I am in part, though unwittingly, responsible for that choice. But how could I have known? How could I have foreseen the consequences

of lending William that old dog-eared 'Nick Carter'? It was a good yarn. I needed someone to enjoy it with me. The book told of the wonderful doings of the brave lads and the one lovely girl, Roxy, who were students at Nick

Carter's famous detective school. How William did enjoy that book! Goodbye, cartoons! Good-bye, church organ! This was the life for him! Were there any detective schools nowadays? Together we searched the magazines. Finally we came upon an advertisement of the Omaha Detective School. William wrote at once for a prospectus. Some day I shall be proud of him. He looks forward to adventurous years. He feels that he is peculiarly fitted for the life of a detective. He has a flair for the work. He told me that he had already had some experience in detecting (the details are vague) and that last year in school he wrote a detective story which was very good. I think he feels that these merits should entitle him to enter the school with advanced standing and enable him to embark upon his professional career at an even earlier age than did the incomparable Roxy. She was about sixteen, I believe, when she foiled the bank robbers and retrieved the emerald necklace. It certainly sounds like a brilliant future, but I know William, and I know William's family, and I doubt if he ever receives a degree from the Omaha Detective School.

In a few years more, William will enter high school. As a freshman, he will pursue a course called 'Civics.' I have read the textbook; I should call the course 'Vocational Opportunities.' Under duress, he will commit to memory statements concerning the advantages and the disadvantages, mostly pecuniary, of different occupations. Many of these statements are, I feel, erroneous. I have the feeling that William will know already, from his careful study of catalogues and prospectuses, quite as much along many vocational lines as did the author of the textbook. William will learn how many bricklayers there were in the United States at the time of the last

census, and what their average earnings were. He will again be prompted to chart his future.

Later on, William will go to Dartmouth, because that is his father's college. And he will decide not to become a lawyer, because that is his father's profession. As regards other vocations he will, I think, by the time he reaches college, be open-minded. In his freshman year at Dartmouth he will pursue an orientation course provided for college freshmen, and vocational opportunities will again be presented to him. Frankly, I don't believe the course will influence him much. Unless he has a more definite bent than I think he has, he will drift along for a year or two preparing for life in general and for no particular way of making a living.

And then, I think, I hope, something will happen to William. In his second or third year, or perhaps not until his senior year, William will, through the grace of God, meet some professor, perhaps some young instructor. He may not be a brilliant specialist or a technically efficient pedagogue, but he will be a man on fire with his subject. And, somehow, a spark will pass from teacher to pupil, and William, if the Lord is good to him, will have found his calling. And as he goes on in pursuit of that calling, I know that he will have a broader outlook on life, and a more sympathetic understanding of the other man's problem, because of the very fact that he failed to make permanent choice of his life's work at the age of ten.

'CALM PEACE AND QUIET' 'GRANDMA and Aunt Sallie and I are planning to run up to Bear Creek for a few days,' said the pleasant voice over the telephone, and we have an extra seat and want you to come along.

I'm going to take the pup, and we can just live in the woods and do nothing but tramp around. I'm sure the rest will do us all good.'

It did sound very inviting, and as I was tired, and loved restful life in the woods, I accepted the invitation. When the time came to start, I found that our party had been increased by several other relatives, in a second automobile. The pup was in our car; he was a large and active collie who had n't quite got his growth, and he liked to think he was a lap dog and sit or sleep in my lap. Grandma and Aunt Sallie drove steadily from the back seat; and with much determination, and after many detours, we reached our destination.

The next day we prepared to carry out our plan to live in the woods and do nothing more arduous than train the pup. The simple life materialized for almost fifteen minutes, and then a messenger arrived and breathlessly addressed me: 'I'm so glad we've found you at last! Miss Blank at the Inn is ill, and about a dozen people are looking for a doctor!'

It was too true; a very valuable and very tired woman had been taken ill suddenly, and for two days there were no more woodland rambles. The pup behaved beautifully during this lapse in his education, so he must have been just naturally good. On the evening when the patient improved and the tension was relaxed, a second excited messenger invaded our quiet.

'Doctor, there's a man, a guest at the Inn, lost in the hills! His wife is nearly distracted, and nobody will do a thing! Won't you come and help start something?'

Three of us tore down to the village in a car, and there in a garage, symbol of the village store, sat state troopers and other men, discoursing of crops, northern lights, the weather, and—

yes, they spoke of the lost man, too, as a matter of current interest; and, as the hours went by, someone opined, 'Ya-as, he's lost all right, I reckon; mebbe we can find him to-morrow.'

They could not be induced to make an immediate search. Two other women tried in vain to stir the village to action, and finally one of them, commandeering an extra car, drove to the next village, went to a movingpicture show, and asked for volunteers. She brought back a carload of active men, and in the second car a band of keen Boy Scouts, and at last things began to move.

The wife of the lost man, who had been getting more and more distraught because of the delays, had finally been persuaded to return to the Inn, and about midnight we went back with the good news that search parties were out and that fires were being kept burning by the Boy Scouts. As she was exhausted from anxiety and lack of nourishment, we prevailed upon her to eat something, and I went with one of the hotel officials to make tea. As we boiled the water over the furnace fire in the basement, my companion looked up and asked with demure interest, 'Doctor, did you come here to rest?'

Finally we all got to bed, but we were up early the next morning, ready to help. A telephone call from a distant point across the valley informed us that the lost tramper was safe, but utterly done up, after his harrowing experiences. He had been taken ill in the woods, had lost the trail, and had spent the night climbing down steep cliffs by the touch system, holding on to trees and bushes as he tested the footholds, or trying to keep warm in the jungle of

trees and underbrush. Would we come over in our car and bring him back to the Inn? So, breakfastless, we started off, and eventually returned the worn and weary traveler to his relieved wife.

Rambles in the woods, while still alluring, seemed less important than restful inactivity for the remainder of my stay. But later in the day someone asked, 'Doctor, won't you give us a little talk on Tibet this evening, in the drawing-room of the Inn? We should all like to hear about your trip.' I answered that they had chosen a place where I had never been, but that I would tell about some places I had visited near Tibet. Owing to a dull season, I had a full house at eight that evening, and in the midst of the question time after the little talk a note was brought to me. The patient whom I had seen on my arrival had had a relapse, and would the doctor come at once? The patient was better before long; and the doctor went to bed very late.

The next day was a busy one. There were plans for the welfare of the patient, and plans for the homeward trip. Decisions by certain members of the family were privately declared by other members of the family to be out of the question. Plans by the other members of the family were in turn privately termed impossible by the original planners. We did manage one brief tramp, for the pup's sake. Then Grandma and Aunt Sallie and the driver and the doctor and the pup were loaded in, together with plenty of gas, and presently were homeward bound, through lovely woods and beside beautiful lakes and rivers, to seek rest and calm and quiet in the busy homes and streets of a big city.

Earnest Elmo Calkins has found in business a life of adventure and wide experience. Its record is spread through his Atlantic papers of personal philosophy, of picturesque accounts of his youth in a prairie town, of his triumph over deafness, and more recently a series of business articles'Business Has Wings,' 'Insuring Insurance,' 'Beauty the New Business Tool,' to mention a few - which, with their understanding of the human and dramatic qualities of industry, have provoked a response unusual in the experience of the editors. These latter papers, vastly augmented, are soon to appear in an important volume published by the Atlantic Monthly Press. The author of 'The Heresy of the Parochial School' is an American Roman Catholic clergyman of more than national prominence. He has held a high and responsible position in his Church, and for over thirty years has ministered to his large flock with gentle devotion and untiring zeal. He has been widely recognized as a deep student of human problems. A man of God and a lover of the people, he is esteemed by all who know him. Elizabeth Stanley, the young daughter of an Atlantic contributor, makes, we think, an impressive début in this number. She was one of William Beebe's associates on the Arcturus Adventure and has worked under Dr. Gregory in the American Museum of Natural History, but is now at home writing for all she is worth. Eleanor Lattimore is another young and far-traveled American. She and her husband planned a wedding trip along the ancient caravan routes to Chinese Turkestan. But-as described in the January Atlantic - they became separated and Mrs. Lattimore was compelled to travel alone for seventeen days, guided by Tatar sledge drivers, spending the nights in filthy Kazak huts that were buried in the snow, and living on frozen bread, brick tea, and bad mutton. 'At first,' she wrote us, 'I nearly froze to

death, but ended up by driving my own sledge through a blizzard because there were n't enough drivers.'

Formerly of Oberlin College, Paul F. Laubenstein is now teaching at the Union Theological Seminary. Joseph Auslander, a frequent contributor in the near past, has returned to his muse after an interval devoted to the preparation of a history of poetry. It will be seen that Lucy Furman has her cause at heart. In a postscript to her paper she reminds us that in almost all of our states there is a statute which fines and imprisons anyone who 'tortures, torments, or cruelly kills any animal,' but that, like other prohibitions, it is seldom enforced. Miss Furman urges all who are interested to write to the Anti-Steel-Trap League, 926 Fifteenth Street, N. W., Washington. Captain B. H. Liddell Hart's studies of the captains of the Great War- shortly to be published in book form would not be complete without the story of General Allenby, who was, as his critic says, the Last Crusader and the commander of one of the most romantic campaigns in history. ¶It appears that in the course of his editorial career John O'Hara Cosgrave has made friends with a certain wise man whom he describes as being 'very bitter about success salesmen, all forms of altruism, and heroes. He hates optimists, pessimists, headaches- the list could be continued indefinitely. His opinion about wines is unprintable, and when he talks about editors and journalism I blush for my hideous past.' In his 'past' Mr. Cosgrave has been editor of Everybody's and managing editor of Collier's Weekly. The Reverend Edmund A. Walsh, S. J., vice president of Georgetown University, continues in this number his dramatic account of the fall of the Romanovs. Father Walsh originally went to Russia with Herbert Hoover; he remained there for years distributing the