Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-02-24

word-and immediate fortunes, the boys
who 'hate to work in a small business,
and had rather have starvation salaries in a
monster house than clerk in a village store
where they can save most of their earnings
by boarding at home. One of this sort in a
cozy home, in college town where an edu-
cation would cost nothing, is fired with a
craze for art carpentry from reading Clar-
ence Cook and other decorative writers,
comes to the city to study under foreign
carver, and in three evenings, an editorial
friend or iend, as you please to write 1t,
| talks him in the notion that newspapers are
the only career. He throws down his chisel
/ for office life, to find in six weeks that he
| has to give it up on account of dire
neuralgia.
DISASTROUS FADS.
| Fruit farming is the talk of the newspa-
/ pers. and there are fruit farms in reach of
| the citv. but nothing will suit him short of
| a 6OO-acre farm in Virginia, the family send
him down to hunt farm, but he comes
back as soon as trains will bring him. A
/ Florida orange grove invites him, or a
| North Carolina mountain side, unless a
Tennessee one proves higher. Before he
can start, however, he takes the rancho
! fever badly, and is wild to make his fortune
/ in five years on the Texas border, but whips
round in favor of course at the Institute of
| Technology with S100 900 salary as mining
superintendent or bridge-builder at the end
of the vista. 1t is blessing when he falls
In love violently and takes a collecting
agency to pay for carriages and theater
tickets for two. beg to say that do not
! depend on Imagination for this picture,
which can be duplicated in every town AID
nearly every family.
A really good, kind father or mother will
be able to stand between boy and mistakes
like these. A few leading considerations
will make the way clear, and the first of
these is health and safety. Your blonde,
sanguine boy or girl should never under
take Office life, as bookkeeper, typewriter,
printer or reporter. The open air, active
life is the only one for the ruddy blonde,
whose deep lungs need twice the air common
people breathe. Such are the stuff for new
countries, when their vitality and the cheer
fulness bred by it will keen them up in
hardship and adventure. Your narrow
fat-chested boy or girl should take to florists
work, then raising or gardening near towns,
where moderate labor is sure OF pay, or else
go to shopkeeping in the new countries
where fresh air and sunshine abound. 1t is
foolish for a broken-down, sallow book
keeper and his thin children to go out on a
farm in Dakota where hardships are cruel,
when the Tennessee or New Hampshire hill
region offers lovely homes, with milder
climate in the Southern State, and better
provision for comfort in the Northern one.
HOW TO STOP THE NONSENSE.
When art and industrial education take
their places in our school courses, there
will be fewer mistakes in choosing voca-
tions. Art loses its flavor when boy finds
he must work as hard with his pencil as his
brother does with hammer and saw. When
the first lessons of art are common as writ
ing, every child who can draw will not feel
obliged to become an artist any more than
all who write turn novelists. ANY over
doing in either line is certain to correct it.
self, as people feel the difference between the
work of the copyist and the touch of genius.
And the very best way of leading Young
people TO know their own quality and that
of art is to make it their familiar recreation.
The singing society should be the first or
ganized diversion of every town ard village,
where each boy and girl should be drafted
into the singing class as soon as they can
read. They should be taught both ballad
and part singing, without accompaniment
or book, learning first the words by heart,
after the method of the best singers, and
then the music. The singing class should
be as democratic as the public school or the
garden society.
WORK ALWAYS AMUSING.
The drawing class may follow, being as
much of tree-and-easy in good form as the
Tile Club of magazine notoriety, and the
young folk will find as much fun in work.
ing at by-table over a set of tile patterns,
joke and criticism as at pro-
gressive euchre or playing author" Or
make it a work society where one brings his
carving, and one her sewing, a third
her drawing, and another his colors.
crude though each may be, and learn |
to blend sociability with occupation. In |
these circles, child learns his level sooner
than we think, and they supply the great |
want Of Sociability in small communities.
The young people grow tired of games, and
even the dancing class loses |
its attraction, but the work society,
where something is really done, never.
A few good models and designs
will send the conceit out of their heads and
they will find how much effort goes to making
a truly beautiful thing, which they may Just as
well learn at home as by an expensive winter
at the Conservatory of Music or the Normal
Art School. The socities for home study can
do far more good by corresponding with such
village clubs than by fostering the conceit of
Isolated pupils. and there is always the chance
Of finding help I'm unexpected quarters, from
visiting artists or people whose gifts have
never been suspected. Bred under such in
duences on speaking terms with art and handi-
craft, boy or girl will be likely to know what
he or she is fit for without a series of disap-
pointing experiments. SHIRLEY DARE