Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/176

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ful or professional or business man has found necessary before he reached the goal of his ambitions. So he rushed from one rainbow end to another in a vain endeavor to find the pot of gold without digging for it.

Two friends of mine, a steady, successful, middle-aged eouple, were stopping for a time at a high-priced hotel in the Allegheny mountains.

"Isn't it strange," Mrs. Granger said to her husband, "how few young people there are here. Almost everyone is middle-aged or past it."

"That's easy," her husband responded. "A man has to be forty-five before he has made enough money to afford to come here."

It is a hard lesson for a boy to learn that in any profession or business that is worth while success comes slowly. Persistence is necessary; faithfulness, courage and willingness to wait for results. It is the hardest, after all, for a boy to learn to wait, for him to realize that the profession or business that promises immediate success is frequently, like the skilfully gilded brick, a thing to be wary of.

One should not choose a profession in which he has no special interest and for the work of which he has no liking. A month or two ago a high school senior from a neighboring state brought to me a letter of introduction from a former student of mine with the request that I should give the boy advice as to the choice of his profession. The young fellow seemed normal in every