The case of Marshall Mears, a young man who consulted us a few years ago with reference to his ambition to become a journalist and author, well illustrates a different phase of this same problem. This young man was of the tall, raw-boned, vigorous, active, energetic, industrious type. There was not a lazy bone in his body. In addition to his energy, he had unusual powers of endurance, so that he could work fifteen, eighteen, or twenty hours a day for weeks at a time without seeming to show any signs of fatigue. He was ambitious for success as a writer. He was willing to work, to work hard, to work long, to wait for recognition through years of constant effort. He had secured a fairly good education and, in many ways, seemed well fitted for the vocation he had chosen to pursue.
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
Still another phase of this problem is presented by the case of N.J.F. This man also wanted to be an editor and writer. He was a big, fine-looking fellow, fairly well educated, had some ability in written expression, and frequent good ideas. With his aptitudes, training, and talents, it seemed, at first
sight, that he certainly ought to be able to succeed in an editorial capacity. Further examination showed, however, a lamentable lack of discrimination, a deficient sense of the fitness of things, and consequently, unreliable judgment. These deficiencies are worse than handicaps to an editor. They are absolute disqualifications. An editor's first duty is to discriminate, to sift, to winnow the few grains of wheat out of the bushels of chaff that come to his mill. Editors must have a very keen sense of the fitness of things. It is true that the discriminating reader of newspapers and magazines may be tempted to feel at times that this sense of the fitness of things is very rare in editors. Unquestionably, it could be improved in many cases, and yet, on the whole, it must be admitted that newspaper and magazine editors perform at least one important function with a very fair degree of acceptability, namely, they purvey material which is at least interesting to the particular class of readers to whom they wish to appeal. If readers could be induced to wade through for a week the masses of uninteresting material which is submitted, they would doubtless have far greater respect for the intelligence, criticism, peculiarities, and sense of fitness of things of the editors.
But we digress. N.J.F. was incapable of sound judgment, not because he did not know the facts, but because, instead of reasoning logically to his conclusion, in accordance with the facts, he was entirely governed by his rather erratic feelings. In other words, he could not reason well from cause to effect; he did not understand people, and so could not sense what would interest them, and his powers of criticism, such as he possessed, were destructive rather than constructive.