How to Analyze People on Sight

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The Sealed Parcel

If you are a parent don't allow yourself to set your heart on any
particular line of work for your children. Your child is a sealed parcel
and only his own tendencies, as they appear during youth, can tell what
that parcel really contains.

Allow these traits to unfold naturally, normally and freely. Don't
complicate your own problem by trying to advise him too soon. Don't
praise certain professions. Children are intensely suggestible. The
knowledge that father and mother consider a certain profession
especially desirable oftentimes influences a child to waste time working
toward it when he has no real ability for it. Every hour of youth is
precious and this wastage is unspeakably expensive.

On the other hand, do not attempt to prejudice your child _against_ any
profession. Don't let him think, for instance, that you consider