The record should cover: 

1. Physical characteristics:  Height; weight; lung capacity; sight; hearing; condition of nasal passages; condition of teeth; bodily strength and endurance; nerve strength or weakness.

2. Health history:  Time lost from school by illness; school work as affected by physical condition when the girl is in school; probable ability or inability to bear the confinement of an indoor occupation; any early illness, accident, or surgical operation which may affect health and therefore vocational possibilities.

3. Mental characteristics:  The quality of school work; studious or active in temperament; best suited for head work, handwork, or a combination; ability to work independently of teacher or other guide; studies most enjoyed; studies in which best work is done; evidences, if any, of special talent, and whether or not sufficient to form basis of life work.

4. Moral characteristics:  Honesty; moral courage; stability; tact; combativeness; leader or follower.

5. Heredity:  Physical statistics in regard to parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, uncles, aunts; occupations followed by these, with success or otherwise; family traditions as to work; special abilities in family noted.

6. Vocational ambitions.

7. Family resources for special training.

Without some such record as this—­and it need scarcely be said that the one given here is capable of wide adaptation to special needs—­teachers, parents, or other friends of the girl are poorly equipped for giving advice as to the girl’s future.  And yet it is common enough for such advice to be thrown out in the most casual manner, with scarcely a thought of the ambitions awakened or of the future to which they may lead.

“You certainly ought to go on the stage,” chorus the admiring friends of the girl who excels in the work of the elocution class.  And sometimes with no other counsel than this, from people who really know nothing about the matter, the girl struggles to enter the theatrical world, only to find that her talent, sufficient to excite admiring comment among her friends, has proved inadequate to make her a worth-while actress.

“Why don’t you study art?” say the friends of another girl; or, “You like to take care of sick people.  Why don’t you train for nursing?” or, “You’re so fond of books.  I should think you would be a librarian”—­quite regardless of the fact that the girl advised to study art has neither the perseverance nor the health to study successfully; that the one advised to be a nurse lacks patience and repose to a considerable degree; or that the one advised to be a librarian is already suffering from strained eyes and should choose her vocation from the great outdoors.