e need not only good men and
women but good boys and girls, if we are to have a fine country."

"A boy can't do much toward it, I'm afraid," Theo said.

"On the contrary, a boy can do a great deal," replied Mr. Croyden. "It
is the boys of to-day who are going to be the men of to-morrow; and
there is no such thing as suddenly becoming a good man, any more than
there is such a thing as a seed suddenly becoming a full-blown plant.
Everything has to grow, and grow slowly, too. So if you wish to be a
wise, honest citizen who will help forward this glorious country we
all love so much, you want to be setting about it right now, you and
every other boy. And you want to go at the work earnestly, too, for
you will be a man before you know it."

"It looks a long way off to me now," mused Theo.

"Such things always do; but time flies pretty fast. You will find
yourself in college the next thing you know; and after that you will
be beginning to plan your career. What are you going to be, Theo?"

"I don't know, sir," was the uncertain answer. "I'd just like to do
something that really needs to be done; something that people cannot
get on without."

"That is a splendid ambition," came heartily from Mr. Croyden. "I
thought perhaps you'd be thinking of taking up your father's job."

"I be a surgeon!" gasped Theo.

"Why not?"

"Oh, because I'd be no good at it," the boy said. "I should never
know what to do with sick people. I'd be scared to death. It seems to
me now that I would rather go into making something; but I do not just
know what."

"You want to be a business man, eh?"

"That is what I'd rather do."

"Humph!"

There was an interval of silence; then Mr. Croyden said:

"Well, if when you are through your education, Theo, we are out of
this war and you are still of the same mind, you come to me. Who knows
but you might end your days in my factories?"

The boy's eyes sparkled.

"Croyden and Swift--how would that sound?"

"It would sound all right," chuckled Theo, "but I am afraid the sound
would be the best part of it. Why, I'd never be able to learn all you
know about china if I lived to be a hundred years old."

"Aren't you learning things about china right now? Haven't you already
learned about the pottery and porcelain of almost every nation under
the sun?"

"I have liked to have you tell me about it," replied Theo modestly.

"Well, isn't that making a beginning?" queried the pottery
merchant. "We ha