ands of young men and women leave school in order to
enter business. By a very natural psychological paradox, there seems to be
a fascination about commerce and finance for many young people who have
little aptitude for these vocations. Many people, feeling their
deficiencies, yearn to convince themselves and others that they are not
deficient. It is only another phase of the fatality with which a Venus
longs to be a Diana and a Minerva a Psyche. Thousands enter business who
have no commercial or financial ability. They cannot know the
requirements; they cannot understand the fundamental principles of
business. Commercially they are babes in the woods. Therefore they go down
to bankruptcy and insolvency, to their great detriment and to the injury
of many thousands of others.

These young people are too impractical for business. They may have a
theoretical understanding of it, and an intellectual desire to succeed.
But, as a result of their impractical type of mind, they neglect details,
they overlook important precautions, they are, oftentimes, too credulous,
too easily influenced. They usually make poor financiers; they do not make
collections well; they are incautious in extending credit and in
maintaining their own credit; often they are inefficient and wasteful in
management; they do not take proper account of all the costs in fixing
prices; they enter into foolish contracts; make promises which they are
unable to keep, and oftentimes, as a result of too great optimism,
undertake far more than is commercially feasible.

HUNGRY FOR FAME

The same strange quirk in human nature which takes the impractical into
the marts, takes many ambitious but inherently unfit into art and
literature. The stage-struck girl who has not one scintilla of dramatic
ability is so common as to be a joke--to all but herself and her friends.
Every editor is wearied with his never-ending task of extinguishing lights
which glow brightly with ambition but have no gleam of the divine fire.
Teachers of art and music, both in this country and abroad, are threatened
with insanity because of the hordes of young men and women who come to
them with money in their hands, demanding to be made into famous artists
and musicians, not having been born with genius. Some of these
unfortunates spend years of time and thousands of dollars in money
attempting to fit themselves for careers, only to end in utter failure.
Some, even after they have made a comparat