A young man of my acquaintance, who had just finished his schooling, came to his father one morning, flushed with pride, and holding an open letter in his hand.

“Father,” he said, “I’ve got a situation, and the man says I may start to work in the morning.”

The father took the letter and read it.

“Do you know all about this man?” he asked.

“Do I know him? Why, no; I don’t know him at all. But he knows all about me. He looked up all my references.”

“Of course he did,” replied the father, putting the letter into his pocket; “and before you go to work for him I’m going to look up his.”

It was a homely, up-state father who said that, but he was a wise and a good man and I revere him. He was a father who knew the boy from the skin in. He knew that the boy’s first employer is, in the boy’s eyes, the greatest man in the world. He perceived that his son, who for twenty years had looked upon him, the father, as the man of men, was about to have set before him a new pattern, a new ideal. And out of his heart came the question:

“What is this man like?”

It is a fine thing to know that you have brought your boy through that plastic period between his cradle-hood and his majority, and to know when he comes of age that he is clean and straight and true. It must be gratifying indeed, when the last text-book is closed and laid away, to see him start into the world, a man grown, with keen aspirations and high ideals, ready and eager to grapple with the world on his own account, and capable of taking care of himself with his own hands.

If you have brought him through safely to this momentous hour, you have done much. But is your task quite ended? Does your responsibility stop here?

That up-state father whom I have just referred to thought that it did not; and I agree with him. I believe that the father and mother yet have that one last touch to give to the character they have helped to form. I believe it is their duty to see, not that the boy has a good situation, but that he starts under a good man.

Naturally, the employer, in most cases, is a man who has met with some success in his business or his profession. He sits apart from his subordinates. However much they may use their ingenuity, it is he who shapes the policy of the business and dominates the concern. Every one about him defers to him. Everything that is done is subject to his approval. He is, in fine, the head and front of the entire establishment. There are clerks and salesmen and accountants and confidential advisers in the place, some with long experience and grey hairs, but none are as great as he, and all look up to the place he occupies as a position worthy of aspiring to.

The youth enters the employ of this man fresh from school or college. Here he gets his first insight of the career he intends to follow. If the employer is a good man, a man of high principles, all is well. But if he is a man of sharp practices, the boy is in danger. Having no other standard of comparison in business life, he may fall into the error of accepting his employer as a true type of the successful man. He has come to this place in a receptive frame of mind. Here the foundation of his chosen career is to be laid. Is it not probable that he will absorb something of the morals of his superior, even though they may not agree with the higher ideals raised in the home? When the boy first strikes out he is, after all, only a fledgling. The family nest has been feathered with love and care and kindness and protecting influences. You have told him of the outside world and you have tried to give him a clear vision. But there are some things about flying alone that only experience can teach. You cannot always extend the home atmosphere beyond the home, but you can do something akin to it. You can make it your business to see that his first glimpse into the new life reveals nothing contrary to the morals of the home.

You can see to it that his first employer is the kind of man you would be satisfied to have your son emulate.

In the selection of the boy’s calling it is admitted, of course, that the boy himself is, in a large measure, the best judge. The vocation that he inclines to most strongly is likely to be the one for which he is best fitted. I think, however, that this rule is made too elastic at times.

A young man of my acquaintance thought that the stage was his calling. The father, telling me of it in confidence, said that in his, the father’s opinion, the boy was best suited to the law, but added that he would say nothing, believing it to be a matter for the young man to decide alone. The young man had an exceptionally good memory, a fine speaking voice and the gift of oratory in a remarkable degree. He was much of a student, prepossessing in appearance and magnetic in personality.

That was ten years ago and the young man has never risen above mediocrity—and he never will. He lacked one essential to the drama—imagination. The truth is that he should have gone into the law. He saw the mistake in course of time, and told me so, but it was too late. Time had elapsed and he could not turn back.

The boy is not always a good self-analyst. He is too prone to measure his talents perfunctorily. It does not follow that your son’s calling is art because he can chalk a caricature on the wall; that he should be a poet because he can dash off a sentiment in rhyme; that he is suited to the clergy because he is of a pious turn of mind. It does not always follow that the thing he does the most easily he can do the best. This is the mistake that parents must guard against when the time comes for choosing a profession for the boy.

They have studied the boy from infancy, while he has studied himself but little, and that with an immatured mind. Is it unlikely, then, that the parents often know his latent capabilities better than he himself knows them? It goes without saying that the son shall not be driven by parental authority into a profession that is distasteful to him; but I think in most cases the parents can aid the boy in finding the true thread of his bent. With no attempt at coercion they can help him to accurately analyse those natural leanings which, in the embryo, are many times conflicting and misleading. It appears to me that the counsel of the parents is needed at this time no less than at any other period in the boy’s life.

Having seen the boy well reared and started in the career for which he is best equipped, and under the direction of a superior whose influence will be uplifting, I think the parents may rest in that peace and tranquillity of mind that comes with the consciousness of a duty well done. They may now sit quietly by and watch while the boy works.

I would caution them against expecting too much of him. Of the million-and-a-half of American boys born every year, all cannot be famous—all cannot be rich. Only a few can be President of the United States. But all can be good citizens, and that is the kind of material that the country needs. We have plenty of great men, and too many very rich men. A great man is merely a good man picked haphazard from thousands of others just as good—picked by Opportunity whenever the occasion demands. A rich man is one who has more money than he needs. Either of these, beyond a certain stage of self-progress, is a child of chance.

What you have a right to expect from your son, if you have trained him conscientiously, is success. I do not mean the success that is measured by the dollar sign, or by the size of the type in which the newspapers print his name.

The successful man, in the true sense of the word, is the law-abiding citizen who gives unto the world enough of his brain and brawn to pay the way of himself and his family through it.

I believe there is the making of such a man in every healthy boy that is born into the civilised world. I believe that every healthy boy is brought into the world a good boy. If one of these develops into a bad boy it is because he is made to; not affirmatively, but negatively—through the want of proper training. All the boy needs is to be treated as a boy. He is not a god, to be worshipped, or a girl, to be coddled, or a dog, to be driven. The boy that I know is a sturdy little human being, distinctly masculine in gender, with a desire to be doing something and a want of direction; in fine, an embryotic man.

Give him the light, tell him the truth, show him the way. Do this consistently, conscientiously, and he will measure up to the highest standard of good citizenship.

More than this I do not ask of my boy.