search for a
vocation can come, like much of her training, only from wise
cooeperation of school and home. Teacher and parent see the girl from
different angles. Their combined judgment will consequently have
double value.

As the time of vocational choice approaches, school records should
cover larger ground than before, and should be made with great care,
with constant appeal to parents for confirmation and additional facts.

The record should cover:

1. _Physical characteristics_: Height; weight; lung capacity; sight;
hearing; condition of nasal passages; condition of teeth; bodily
strength and endurance; nerve strength or weakness.

2. _Health history_: Time lost from school by illness; school work as
affected by physical condition when the girl is in school; probable
ability or inability to bear the confinement of an indoor occupation;
any early illness, accident, or surgical operation which may affect
health and therefore vocational possibilities.

3. _Mental characteristics_: The quality of school work; studious or
active in temperament; best suited for head work, handwork, or a
combination; ability to work independently of teacher or other guide;
studies most enjoyed; studies in which best work is done; evidences,
if any, of special talent, and whether or not sufficient to form basis
of life work.

4. _Moral characteristics_: Honesty; moral courage; stability; tact;
combativeness; leader or follower.

5. _Heredity_: Physical statistics in regard to parents, brothers,
sisters, grandparents, uncles, aunts; occupations followed by these,
with success or otherwise; family traditions as to work; special
abilities in family noted.

6. _Vocational ambitions_.

7. _Family resources for special training_.

Without some such record as this--and it need scarcely be said that
the one given here is capable of wide adaptation to special
needs--teachers, parents, or other friends of the girl are poorly
equipped for giving advice as to the girl's future. And yet it is
common enough for such advice to be thrown out in the most casual
manner, with scarcely a thought of the ambitions awakened or of the
future to which they may lead.

"You certainly ought to go on the stage," chorus the admiring friends
of the girl who excels in the work of the elocution class. And
sometimes with no other counsel than this, from people who really know
nothing about the matter, the girl struggles to enter the theatrical
world, only