| OCR Text |
Show Author of "How to Win Friends and Influence People. PHRENOLOGY Ihave a letter from a man containing a startling question startling because it is so "childish." He says he knows a "traveling phrenologist" who reads heads for a quarter each. Since he has not been able to find the kind of work he is fitted for, this man asked if I thought he should have his head "scientifically "scien-tifically analyzed." I begged him not to waste even a quarter on such quackery. No one can read the bumps on your head and learn anything about you. But do you know that if you had lived a hundred years ago, instead of today, you would have believed you could learn things about yourself by having your head read. Incredible as it seems now, some of the most brilliant bril-liant men in America a century ago believed in phrenology. phre-nology. A "phrenology craze" swept the country at that time. Stores demanded that clerks applying for jobs should have their heads read before they would even be considered for a position ! People actually lost jobs because they didn't have the right kind of bumps. The "Professors" had drawings of the head painted on great canvas sheets, the head marked off in sections sec-tions showing exactly where certain abilities were located. Some of the fancy names applied to the bumps are : Philoprogenitiveness, Amativeness, Veneration. Ven-eration. The "Professors" actually pointed to a bump on your head labeled "Philoprogenitiveness" and said that if you didn't have it you wouldn't get ahead in the world! A man named Fowler wrote a book called "Phrenology "Phre-nology Proved, Illustrated and Applied." This absurd ab-surd book was a best seller. Sixty editions of it poured pour-ed from the press. Surprisingly enough, important outstanding people of the day believed in bump reading. One of them was Henry Ward Beecher, the most famous preacher of his day. He believed in it earnestly and sincerely and actually scolded the girl he was going to marry for wearing ringlets hiding the conformation of her head. "A well-shaped well-shaped head is far more beautiful than a tassle of curls," he said. So ardent was his faith that he made her brush out her curls and wear her hair drawn tight about her head. Horace Mann, perhaps the most famous educator ever born in America, was converted to phrenology, and wrote articles praising the wonderful discovery ! The famous Horace "Go-West-Young-Man" Greeley was converted, and lauded it in editorials. Walt Whitman, Whit-man, the poet, wrote a poem praising this "marvelous "marvel-ous discovery." Ralph Waldo Emerson, America's best known philosopher, declared the inventor of phrenology one of the finest minds the world has produced! pro-duced! Yes, actually! Don't waste your time or money on such fol-de-rol. Even the best trained vocational consultants consult-ants of today have to study you for hours to get a hint of what you are best adapted for. I asked Robert Hoppock, an authority on vocational vocation-al guidance, to give me the name of a reliable book on vocational guidance that I could recommend in this column. He suggested "How to Find the Right Vocation," Vo-cation," by H. D. Kiston. You may be able to find it at your public library. |
