the different professions. Their point of view is narrowed by their own
experiences, which have been, perhaps too harsh, perhaps too easy. Many
parents have a narrow, selfish, rather jealous feeling that their children
cannot be any more intelligent than they are. "The old farm was good
enough for me; it is good enough for my son"; "the old business was good
enough for me; it is good enough for my son." This is the attitude. This
is why many parents either refuse their children the advantages of an
education and insist upon their going to work at an early age, or compel
them to take a hated schooling.

On the other hand, there are parents who consider their children
prodigies, geniuses, intended to occupy some great and magnificent
position in the world. Most frequently they hold their judgment entirely
apart from any real talents on the part of the child. Few human woes are
more bitter than the disappointment and heartache of both parent and son
when a young man who might have been a successful and happy farmer or
merchant fails utterly as an artist or writer.

Parents often persuade their children to enter vocations upon the
flimsiest possible pretexts. Almost every child takes a pencil and tries
to draw, yet there are many parents who spend thousands of dollars in
trying to make great artists of children who have only the most mediocre
artistic ability. Mere purposeless drawing of faces and figures is an
entirely different thing from the drudgery necessary to become a great
artist. The mere writing of little essays and compositions is quite a
different thing from the long, hard training necessary to become a writer
of any acceptability. Merely because a child finds it easier to dawdle
away the hours with a pencil or a brush than to go into the harvest field
or into the kitchen is not a good reason for supposing that this
preference is an indication of either talent or genius.