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Page 4
DON'T MISTAKE YOUR VOCATION
The safest plan, and the one most sure of success for the young man
starting in life, is to select the vocation which is most congenial to
his tastes. Parents and guardians are often quite too negligent in
regard to this. It very common for a father to say, for example: "I have
five boys. I will make Billy a clergyman; John a lawyer; Tom a doctor,
and Dick a farmer." He then goes into town and looks about to see what
he will do with Sammy. He returns home and says "Sammy, I see watch-
making is a nice genteel business; I think I will make you a goldsmith."
He does this, regardless of Sam's natural inclinations, or genius.
We are all, no doubt, born for a wise purpose. There is as much
diversity in our brains as in our countenances. Some are born natural
mechanics, while some have great aversion to machinery. Let a dozen boys
of ten years get together, and you will soon observe two or three are
"whittling" out some ingenious device; working with locks or complicated
machinery. When they were but five years old, their father could find no
toy to please them like a puzzle. They are natural mechanics; but the
other eight or nine boys have different aptitudes. I belong to the
latter class; I never had the slightest love for mechanism; on the
contrary, I have a sort of abhorrence for complicated machinery. I never
had ingenuity enough to whittle a cider tap so it would not leak. I
never could make a pen that I could write with, or understand the
principle of a steam engine. If a man was to take such a boy as I was,
and attempt to make a watchmaker of him, the boy might, after an
apprenticeship of five or seven years, be able to take apart and put
together a watch; but all through life he would be working up hill and
seizing every excuse for leaving his work and idling away his time.
Watchmaking is repulsive to him.
Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and
best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to
believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation. Yet
we see many who have mistaken their calling, from the blacksmith up (or
down) to the clergyman. You will see, for instance, that extraordinary
linguist the "learned blacksmith," who ought to have been a teacher of
languages; and you may have seen lawyers, doctors and clergymen who were
better fitted by nature for the anvil or the lapstone.
SELECT THE RIGHT LOCATION
After securing the right vocation, you must be careful to select the
proper location. You may have been cut out for a hotel keeper, and they
say it requires a genius to "know how to keep a hotel." You might
conduct a hotel like clock-work, and provide satisfactorily for five
hundred guests every day; yet, if you should locate your house in a
small village where there is no railroad communication or public travel,
the location would be your ruin. It is equally important that you do not
commence business where there are already enough to meet all demands in
the same occupation. I remember a case which illustrates this subject.
When I was in London in 1858, I was passing down Holborn with an English
friend and came to the "penny shows." They had immense cartoons outside,
portraying the wonderful curiosities to be seen "all for a penny." Being
a little in the "show line" myself, I said "let us go in here." We soon
found ourselves in the presence of the illustrious showman, and he
proved to be the sharpest man in that line I had ever met. He told us
some extraordinary stories in reference to his bearded ladies, his
Albinos, and his Armadillos, which we could hardly believe, but thought
it "better to believe it than look after the proof'." He finally begged
to call our attention to some wax statuary, and showed us a lot of the
dirtiest and filthiest wax figures imaginable. They looked as if they
had not seen water since the Deluge.
"What is there so wonderful about your statuary?" I asked.
"I beg you not to speak so satirically," he replied, "Sir, these are
not Madam Tussaud's wax figures, all covered with gilt and tinsel and
imitation diamonds, and copied from engravings and photographs. Mine,
sir, were taken from life. Whenever you look upon one of those figures,
you may consider that you are looking upon the living individual."
Glancing casually at them, I saw one labeled "Henry VIII," and feeling a
little curious upon seeing that it looked like Calvin Edson, the living
skeleton, I said: "Do you call that 'Henry the Eighth?'" He replied,
"Certainly; sir; it was taken from life at Hampton Court, by special
order of his majesty; on such a day."
He would have given the hour of the day if I had resisted; I said,
"Everybody knows that 'Henry VIII.' was a great stout old king, and that
figure is lean and lank; what do you say to that?"
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