who, despite their
prejudices and envy, would eventually be compelled to accord him his true
position. To prove his claims, Larime read us some of his "poetry." It was
bad, very bad, and yet it was not quite bad enough to be good.

Such visions of glory as obscured Larime Hutchinson's sensible view of the
practical world are, perhaps, common enough in adolescence, and, as a
general rule, work no serious harm. There were, however, two fatal defects
of character in this case. The first was that Larime continued to dream
and to write what he thought was verse, when he ought to have been at work
plowing corn, for he had qualities which, with industry, would have made
him a successful farmer. Second, he was mentally too lazy for the drudgery
even the greatest poet must perform if he is to perfect his technique.

A MIND FOCUSSED ON DETAILS

The case of Marshall Mears, a young man who consulted us a few years ago
with reference to his ambition to become a journalist and author, well
illustrates a different phase of this same problem. This young man was of
the tall, raw-boned, vigorous, active, energetic, industrious type. There
was not a lazy bone in his body. In addition to his energy, he had unusual
powers of endurance, so that he could work fifteen, eighteen, or twenty
hours a day for weeks at a time without seeming to show any signs of
fatigue. He was ambitious for success as a writer. He was willing to work,
to work hard, to work long, to wait for recognition through years of
constant effort. He had secured a fairly good education and, in many ways,
seemed well fitted for the vocation he had chosen to pursue.

A careful examination, however, showed two fundamental deficiencies in
Marshall Mears which training could only partially overcome. First, his
was one of those narrow-gauge, single-track minds. He was incapable of any
breadth of vision. His mind was completely obsessed with details. He would
go to a lecture, or to a play, and invariably, instead of grasping the
main argument of the lecture, or the lesson of the play, he saw only a few
inconsequential details of action in the play, and remembered only stray
and somewhat irrelevant statements made by the lecturer. A novel or an
essay appealed to him in the same way. Present to him a business
proposition and his whole attention would be absorbed by some chance
remark. He was a devoted admirer of the late Elbert Hubbard and he had
longed for years to hear the great