A careful examination, however, showed two fundamental deficiencies in Marshall Mears which training could only partially overcome. First, his was one of those narrow-gauge, single-track minds. He was incapable of any breadth of vision. His mind was completely obsessed with details. He would go to a lecture, or to a play, and invariably, instead of grasping the main argument of the lecture, or the lesson of the play, he saw only a few inconsequential details of action in the play, and remembered only stray and somewhat irrelevant statements made by the lecturer. A novel or an essay appealed to him in the same way. Present to him a business proposition and his whole attention would be absorbed by some chance remark. He was a devoted admirer of the late Elbert Hubbard and he had longed for years to hear the great man lecture. Finally his opportunity came and he was greatly elated, and not a little excited, as he looked forward to what he believed to be one of the treats of a lifetime. When he returned from the lecture, as we had feared, instead of being uplifted and delighted, he was manifestly disappointed. "Didn't you like the lecture?" we asked. "I cannot understand," he complained, "why as intelligent a man as Hubbard should split his infinitives." Naturally, a man with a mind like this could not construct a plot or outline an article. His writings, like his conversations, were long drawn out, meandering and painfully tiresome recitations of trifling and, for the most part, irrelevant detail. We counselled him to lay aside his pen and take hold of plow handles instead. He has since become a successful farmer, perfectly happy, working out all the infinitude of minutiae in connection with the intensive cultivation of small fruits. LACK OF DISCRIMINATION A HANDICAP