ing or have been offered an unusually attractive position and they fear that if they wait to complete their education all the good jobs will be gone. Opportunity knocks but once, they say, and they are convinced that he is now at their door.
Over against these facts, however, are others. Noone has ever been heard to regret, no matter what sort of business or profession he is in, that his preparation was too carefully made, that he put in too much time or too much money on his preliminary education, or did too much studying before he began. On the other hand, there are illustrations without number of men who bemoan the fact all their lives that they gave too little time to preparation and that they made their greatest mistake in not finishing their education. Illustrations innumerable can be found, also, of men who even in middle life got into the professions for which a delayed preparation had been made and who have more than made good.
The boy or the young man, therefore, who hesitates about taking up the profession or the business which he likes best because of the time or the money necessary to prepare for it, or the man who rushes into work ill prepared because he is afraid all the good jobs will be gone if he waits, is making a serious mistake. It is far better to take up a profession we like even late in life than it is to drag out a dull existence in doing the things mechanically which fail to bring out our best efforts. It is better to finish one's preparations as thoroughly
