Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/36

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Sometimes this means creating in his present employment the desired opportunity. Imagination and invention can often delve into their own environment and find the seeds of growth. There are, however, many jobs that are so mechanical, so limited in scope, and so monotonous in the activities which they require, that there is little hope for self-expression in them. Those who earn their living in such ways, if they cannot change their work, should seek place for the play of their faculties in an avocation. There are many examples of this. Hawthorne's interest was writing, but he supported himself for years by a clerkship in a customs house. A man may be an operative in a factory and yet may make the art of photography his work, and not infrequently an inspired evangelist is concealed within the overalls of a janitor or behind the leathern apron of a cobbler.

Self-expression in work includes more than the achievement of brain and hand. It is dependent also upon the quality of the association that the individual has with his fellows. The office and the shop stand next to the home in the adaptability that they require of people. They are the very crossroads of life where personalities meet and