sympathy, so ought that experience of spiritual and intellectual agitation
which often intervenes between the training for life and the process of
actual living. This experience is a true year of wandering, and there is
nothing of which the wanderer stands in such need as the friendly hand and
the door which stands hospitably open.

It is the born drudge alone who is content to go from the school to the
office or the shop without so much as asking the elementary questions
about life. The aspiring want to know what is behind the occupation; they
must discover the spiritual necessity of work before they are ready to
bend to the inevitable yoke. Strong natures are driven by the Very
momentum of their own moral impulse to explore the world before they build
in it and unite themselves with it; the imagination must be fed with
beauty and truth before they are content to choose their task and tools.
It is often a sign of greatness in a man that he does not quickly fit into
his place or easily find his work. Let him look well at the stars before
he bends to his task; he will need to remember them when the days of toil
come, as they must come, at times, to every man. Let him see the world
with his own eyes before he gives to fortune those hostages which hold him
henceforth fast-bound in one place.

It is as natural for ardent and courageous youth to wish to know what is
in life, what it means, and what it holds for its children, as for a child
to reach for and search the things that surround and attract it. Behind
every real worker in the world is a real man, and a man has a right to
know the conditions under which he must live, and the choices of
knowledge, power, and activity which are offered him. In the education of
many men and women, therefore, there comes the year of wandering; the
experience of travelling from knowledge to knowledge and from occupation
to occupation. There are men and women, it is true, who are born under