Young apprentices in any branch where there is some kind of technical or artistic appeal, such as mechanics or architecture, show an almost incredible capacity of effort, often spending, as I have seen them do, whole days over problems. I know too a young man who, appointed very young to political office, found that the law would be useful to him, and travels every evening to a near-by city to take courses. His previous career had been most inglorious, well calculated by its aimlessness to ruin any “character”; but the incentive was applied, and he proved quite capable of putting forth a surprising amount of steady effort. Our critics are perhaps misled by the fact that these young men do not announce with a blare of trumpets that they are about to follow in the footsteps of an Edison or a Webster. It must be admitted that even such men as I have cited do still contrive to work into their time a surprising amount of pleasure. But the whole situation shows conclusively, I think, that our author has missed the point when she says that the rising generation shows a real softening of the human fibre. It is rather that we have the same reserves of ability and effort, but that from the complex nature of the economic situation these reserves are not unlocked so early or so automatically as with former generations. The fact that our fathers did not need correspondence schools or night schools, or such things, implies either that they were not so anxious as we to count in the world, or that success was an easier matter in their day, either of which conclusions furnishes a pretty good extenuation of our apparent incapacity. We cannot but believe that our difficulties are greater in this generation; it is hard to see that the effort we put forth to overcome these difficulties is not proportional to that increase. I am aware that to blame your surroundings when the fault lies in your own character is the one impiety which rouses the horror of present-day moral teachers. Can it not count to us for good, then, that most of us, while coming theoretically to believe that this economic situation explains so much of our trouble, yet continue to act as if our deficiencies were all our own fault?