VOCATION VERSUS AVOCATION 



you. In that case, the wide field of the arts will surely 

 furnish an attraction. Perhaps you care for pictures? 

 Then by all means study drawing, and learn to make 

 pictures; for there are few more perennial pleasures 

 than that which comes from seeing new forms body 

 forth on the hitherto blank paper or canvas. No- 

 where else does the sense of creating, with all its joys, 

 come more vividly than in the production of a new entity 

 so tangible, so unique, as a picture, provided, of course 

 the picture is a fairly artistic one. 



But what if you lack the inherent capacity of eye and 

 hand to take on the training essential to the mere tech- 

 nique of the artist ? As to that, you need not have much 

 fear, if you have any taste for the subject at all. It is 

 often said that anyone who can learn to write can 

 learn to draw. I have had occasion to point out that 

 the history of the art of writing shows that this assertion 

 expresses something less than the truth. There were 

 many generations of people who could draw before 

 ever there was one that had even the conception of writ- 

 ing. And when the idea of writing did make itself 

 tangible, the feat was accomplished merely by putting 

 together a series of pictures to express a sequence of 

 ideas. The picture-writing of the Mayas of Yucatan 

 and the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians show 

 that among these peoples the scribe had need to be a 

 draughtsman of no mean skill. And the feat of the 

 modern penman seems less difficult only because writ- 

 ing is so universal an accomplishment. In point of 

 fact, every child learns to draw the characters before 

 he can properly be said to write them; and if he learns 



