convinced his son would make an excellent lawyer because he was such a ready talker. If the ability to talk readily fitted one for the practice of law, women, some people think, would have a distressing handicap over men. Fluent speech is, of course, often a help to a lawyer if it is accompanied by other talents, but fluent speech which is not induced by logical reasoning and an accurate knowledge of law may as likely as not be a handicap instead of an asset to a man attempting to practice law. Lawyers have been known to lose their cases by not knowing when to stop talking. Again parents frequently assure me that their young sons have unusual fitness for engineering work because, perhaps, they have constructed an electric motor, or made a water wheel, or fixed a refractory lawn mower. Such mechanical ability is often an aid to engineering work, but it is in no way an absolute necessity or a manifestation of engineering genius. It suggests the mechanic rather than the engineer.
So far as it is possible, however, one should find out whatever special fitness he may have for any one work and devote himself to that. Teachers can help in this decision; parents should recognize the talents of their children and try to make the most of them; the boy himself should analyze his own special fitness. I have never been sure as to just how accurately the average man can judge of his own individual ability. A shrewd executive whom I once knew used to say that when a young man confessed to more than ordinary skill in any
