WHEN PROMISING CHILDREN FAIL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19197, 13 June 1924, Page 10

WHEN PROMISING CHILDREN FAIL.

Mothers of bright and brainy children are sometimes disappointed (writes-M. L. in the Daily Chromcle) that when these young people begin life on their own they do not easily achieve tho success which their gifts, as it was always assumed, should win for them. On the oilier hand, they are often left behind by pleasant, mediqcie boys and girls who grow astonishingly into successful men and women. Originality, it seems, is at a discount. And, as a matter of fact, it often is. There is a much bigger, much more certain market for intelligent ordinariness than there is for the freshness of view and performance, which seems to be tinged with that rather dread qualitygenius. It is true that men of originality have organised the businesses which they have ultimately come to control, and have made for themselves big names in the process. But such a man will probably tell you that in his young day his new ideas were not welcomed; that he had to fight against conservatism and a profound distrust of the untried. Originality often has to make its way slowly. Another reason for the seeming failure of the specially-gifted man or woman in youth is to bo found in the individual indifference to financial success. Everyone likes money, of course, hut the people who care intensely about their work or art for its own sake, are never singleminded in the pursuit of wealth. They are too much absorned in what they are doing to have an eye on the clock which should be ticking on towards monetary advances. Wide tastes and interests, which often characterise the exceptionally intelligem mind, do not make for either professional or business success at an early age. They make life interesting, and are therefore never to bo deplored. But it should he accepted that fine responses to art and literature, an ability to assimilate scientific knowledge, and similar distinctions, arc not definitely aids to swift progress on the road to recognition! We speak cf people as being “limited,” and do not always realise that their very limitations may keep them safely on the highway to their own particular goal. ... Brains and originality bring their reward at last, but it may be a long last, and after difficult lessons in adaptation.