One important outcome of a study of our children's ideals and ambitions should be the direction of their vocational choices. We have read of Benjamin Franklin's father, who took his boys about to various shops with a view to helping them make up their minds as to what kind of trade they should follow. Nowadays we should consider this method rather crude; but for a variety of reasons most of us do not do even this much for our children. A study of children's plans and hopes for their future work brings out the fact that the desire to "earn money" as a motive in the choice increases up to the age of twelve years, and then declines rapidly. This may be taken to mean that, apart from the enlarged range of interests that comes with increased experience, there is also an efflorescence of the fancy that leads to increased concern with ideal ends. This is confirmed by a comparison of the choice made by children of well-to-do families with those made by children of rather poor people. The children of the poor, in tragically large numbers, appear to accept the fact of working as a necessity of life; they accept this doggedly as a matter of course. The children of more prosperous families, on the other hand, though frequently expressing preferences for the same kinds of occupations, have their hearts set on the joy of achievement, or on the ideal of service, or on the fun of _doing_, in much larger proportions. From answers written by English children in a factory district these examples are typical: A boy of eight: "I should like to be a Carpenter. Because my mother says I can be one." A girl of twelve: "I should like to go out when I am older to earn my own living." Another girl of twelve: "I think it would be nice to go out to a situation." In contrast with these are the answers given by children of the same ages who came from homes of culture, if not always of wealth: A boy of eight: "I would like to be like Major ---- because I like carpentering very much and he carpenters beautifully. Once he bought a box for his silver and there was one tray to it and he wanted to make little fittings for the silver so first he painted some names on some paper of all the different things he had; then he cut them out and supposing he wanted to put knives and forks quickly he would have a little name written down where they ought to go and he made the fittings most beautifully quite as well as any shop would." A girl of thirteen: "One thing I should like to do would be to be a very clever naturalist, and to know everything about everything alive or in the country world." A girl of ten: "I should like to be a piano teacher, when I grow up, for then I shall be able to learn to play many pieces of poetry."