Immediately after leaving school is the most perplexing period in a boy’s life. Not only for the boy himself, but for his parents, for then has to be considered his future career. What is the boy capable of? What are his own personal wishes? What profession is he best adapted for physically? It is indeed a momentous question. It is worse than useless for the boy fond of good, wholesome, out-of-door exercises and games to be put into an office or to study for the Bar, or to mope his young life away pen-driving. And, on the other hand, it is a positive torture for the youth with distinct literary taste, or love of things scholastic, to take up a Commission in one of the Services, or to go in for farming or a similar profession. Taking everything into consideration, at least eighty per cent. of boys may be grouped into the former class--that is to say, they wish to adopt a healthy, open-air profession; and for this type of youth nothing can be better, and nothing can offer greater inducements, than the profession of the airman. It is a calling that appeals irresistibly to a boy’s heart. The best possible training for the pilot of the air are outdoor sports and games. Football, which teaches the boy to keep his head in all emergencies, to keep his feelings always well under control, and to learn to obey implicitly the discipline of the referee’s whistle will prove invaluable to him when learning to fly, when he will be subject to every kind and manner of unexpected and sudden mishap and accident. Cricket will teach him patience, judgment--so invaluable when landing an aeroplane (which, incidentally, is by far the most difficult feat to accomplish in flying)--and a steady eye. Swimming and running will develop those muscles of the back and thigh which are used extensively in the pilotage of the aeroplanes. Again, the sensation of a horse jumping a hedge is exactly similar to that of an aeroplane just getting off from the ground. With ski-ing, on the other hand, there is the feeling--and, in fact, the action--of plunging desperately into what, at the first attempt, appears to be an interminable and awful space. This is exactly the feeling experienced by the novice in his first trip up aloft. There is a strong similarity to ski-ing at the moment that the nose of the machine is suddenly put down, and she commences to sink rapidly towards the earth. The next matter to be taken into consideration is that of physical peculiarities. The would-be pilot must be neither too tall nor too short. This is essentially a matter to do with the steering of the aeroplane. If he is too tall, he will find himself very cramped in the confined space between the pilot-seat and the rudder-bar. If he is too short he will discover that his legs will not be long enough to reach that all-important adjunct.