Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/110

 talent will get on more easily than other men. Last year a young sophomore found himself without money and without a job. He saw an advertisement in the college paper for a cook in one of the short order restaurants near the campus. He had helped his mother cook at home, he had had a month's experience cooking in a summer camp for boys; he had some nerve, so he applied for the place and got it. The best part of the story is that he gave satisfaction, earned his board, and made a respectable salary besides.

The undergraduate who last year at the University of Illinois made the most money of any one who was trying to earn his living, did so by writing songs. His poetic efforts were in no sense remarkable; in fact I am not sure but that the same thing might be said of most of those words and music which are ritiging in our ears most often as we go down the street, but what this young fellow wrote seemed to catch the popular ear, and he reaped the reward of his appeal. He had a certain talent that was not great, perhaps, but it was not common.

It is the man who lets his brains save his strength, who makes the most money. In fact it is most often the man who does not work at all physically but who uses his head to make his plans and who hires some less clever thinkers to take the hard knocks,—it is this sort of fellow who really earns his way through college most successfully. A wide awake junior last year made arrangements with a city wholesale house to take orders for butter. Early in the fall he made a preliminary canvass of all the fraternity houses and general student boarding clubs,