“The article is the best I have read until I get toward the end.  Listen:  ’No greater mistake can be made than for a parent to force a child into some calling or profession for which he has no liking.  The boy will be sure to fail.’  Now, what do you think of that?”

“The latter part sounds very much like what you said to me this afternoon.”

“It isn’t that, which is true enough, but the idea that a boy knows better than his father what is the right profession for him to follow.  That doctrine is too much like Young America who thinks he knows it all.”

“Read on, father; let me hear the rest.”

The father was silent a minute or two, while he skimmed through the article.

“It isn’t worth reading,” he remarked impatiently, thereby proving that he had been hit by the arguments which he found difficult to refute.  Maggie made no comment, but smiled significantly at Tim across the board, as they resumed their game.

In truth, Mr. Hunter had come upon some sentiments that set him to thinking, such, for instance, as these:  “It may be said with truth in many cases, that the father is the best judge of what the future of his son should be.  In fact no one can question this, but the father does not always use that superior knowledge as he should.  Perhaps he has yielded to the dearest wish of the mother that their son should become a minister.  The mother’s love does not allow her to see that her boy has no gifts as a speaker and no love for a clergyman’s life.  He longs to be a lawyer or doctor.  Will any one deny that to drive the young man into the pulpit is the greatest mistake that can be made?

“Sometimes a father, with an only son, perhaps, intends that he shall be trained to follow in his footsteps.  The boy has a dislike for that calling or profession,—­a dislike that was born with him and which nothing can remove.  His taste runs in a wholly different channel; whatever talent he has lies there.  While it may be convenient for him to step into his parent’s shoes, yet he should never be forced to do so, but be allowed to select that for which he has an ability and toward which he is drawn.  Parents make such sad mistakes as these, and often do not awake to the fact until it is too late to undo the mischief that has been done.  Let them give the subject their most thoughtful attention and good is sure to follow.”

It was these words, following on the talk he had had with Maggie a short time before that set Mr. Hunter to thinking more deeply than he had ever done over the problem in which his son was so intimately concerned.  After his children had retired and he was left alone, he turned over the paper and read the article again.  It stuck to him and he could not drive it away.  Laying the journal aside, he lit his pipe and leaned back in his chair.