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Show I SELF DIRECTION 1 By THOMAS ARKLE CLARK I, Dean of Men, Univartity of g Illinois. Cnntner was standing tn front of the old hoiisp In which hp la Ilvtni whnn fed I drove by this morning. He Is rather a broken old man now. making an uncertain uncer-tain living oy ed dllug his products from door to door. I recull that when i was n young fellow he had the best shop of lis kind In town and we thought was due might have been different, but Cnntner remained bachelor, and so missed the chance of having a regular manager. man-ager. There is no telling how mnny of us have been saved by marriage. Cross knew a good deal about engineering. en-gineering. In fact, in college it looked as if he mlKht become renlly outstanding out-standing engineer. He had no Initio tlve, however. He could follow directions direc-tions admirably. If a piece of work were mapped out for him, he would carry I' out to the lust detail It wns when he wns left to his own devices that he got Into difficulty. When there was no one to give him directions direc-tions be seeemd lost, uncertain. Insf fectlve. He found It difficult to set himself to work ; It seemed Impossible for him to institute anything "ew r out of the ordinary routine. .So long as he had a job under the supervision of another man things went well with him, but put him upon his own resources, re-sources, and he wns lost He kne.v how to obey, ' but he had no understanding under-standing of how to cnmmnnd either himself or others. He has been out of college twenty years and Is little further along the rond to success than when he started. Mrs. flutes has been telling me what n fine boy she has. H' got out of high school a year ago, and ever since has hnd a good Job. His boss has said all sorts of commendatory things n limit the boy. and his mother thinks he will make everyone sit up and take notice when he gets Into college. It may lie so. to become one ot the well to-do citizens citi-zens of town. He bad .earned his trade early, he hud shown more than commonplace talent in It, and when he wns twenty-five or so hnd started an Independent business of his own. He was n excellent worker, be knew his particular trade, and when work Ing for some one else no one wns better, bet-ter, but he could not manage himself. He had no business sense, no powers of self direction, and whatever he undertook un-dertook ended In fullure. 1 1 ...I.wl fl-f nn (l.lt.n nn.l MtoA fin II! 1 1 ICU in ni wurj mini; ,,- nnr,, uu other, but only when ht was tinder the direction of some one else did he accompli:. ac-compli:. h anything worth while. He had n et learned the power of self direction. He hnd to have a manager or a boss to bring out the best that was In him. If he had been married it Young Gates has never directed hint self. His tasks have so far been set for him He has been called In the morning by his mother; lie has done during the day what has been laid out for him. When he gets to college he will have t be self directing and that Is an entirely different story. ffl 192 Wratrrn NrwaMurr UnC-n I |
