ss. It is
next to impossible to get a first-class mechanic; he has not learned his
trade; he has picked it up, and botches everything he touches, spoiling
good material and wasting valuable time.

In the professions, it is true, we find greater skill and faithfulness,
but usually they have been developed at the expense of mental and moral
breadth.

The merely professional man is narrow; worse than that, he is in a sense
an artificial man, a creature of technicalities and specialties, removed
alike from the broad truth of nature and from the healthy influence of
human converse. In society, the most accomplished man of mere
professional skill is often a nullity; he has sunk his personality in
his dexterity.

"The aim of every man," said Humboldt, "should be to secure the highest
and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and
consistent whole."

Some men impress us as immense possibilities. They seem to have a sweep
of intellect that is grand; a penetrative power that is phenomenal; they
seem to know everything, to have read everything, to have seen
everything. Nothing seems to escape the keenness of their vision. But
somehow they are forever disappointing our expectations. They raise
great hopes only to dash them. They are men of great promise, but they
never pay. There is some indefinable want in their make-up.

What the world needs is a clergyman who is broader than his pulpit, who
does not look upon humanity with a white neckcloth ideal, and who would
give the lie to the saying that the human race is divided into three
classes: men, women and ministers. Wanted, a clergyman who does not look
upon his congregation from the standpoint of old theological books, and
dusty, cobweb creeds, but who sees the merchant as in his store, the
clerk as making sales, the lawyer pleading before the jury, the
physician standing over the sick bed; in other words, who looks upon the
great throbbing, stirring, pulsing, competing, scheming, ambitious,
impulsive, tempted, mass of humanity as one of their number, who can
live with them, see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and
experience their sensations.

The world has a standing advertisement over the door of every
profession, every occupation, every calling: "Wanted--A Man."

Wanted, a lawyer, who has not become the victim of his specialty, a mere
walking bundle of precedents.

Wanted, a shopkeeper who does not discuss markets wherever he goes. A
man shoul