p. 333 | Having a Bent

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 28, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 21.

Having a Bent.

A GREAT many men have no bent. They spend their life in trying to find out what they are fitted for, and fail for want of the discovery. The average boy goes through school and college (if he goes to college) with no idea of what he is going to make of himself. He knows as little on graduation day as on the day he entered. Now, however, he can wait no longer; he must do something. He tosses up. His dice are labeled law, medicine, ministry, journalism, business, bank. He throws for a choice. He goes into the ministry because this gives him three more years of agreeable student life at little or no expense; or law because law is a highway into a variety of professions; or journalism because he enjoys seeing the fruit of his pen in print; or business because he wants to be well off, and he does not know that over ninety per cent. of business men fail; or he goes home to live, or teaches for a living for a year or two, because he cannot make up his mind what to do or be. Perhaps he chooses his father's profession, because it is his father's; more probably he repudiates it, for the same reason; perhaps a stronger classmate awakens a short-lived enthusiasm for some calling, to be followed by a lifelong regret that he did not take some other; perhaps he just stumbles in at the nearest open door, merely because it is open. Blessed, therefore, I say, is the boy who has a bent; who knows what he wants to be and do. By all means encourage him in it.—Sel.