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Page 5
"Why," he replied, "you would be lean and lank yourself if you sat there
as long as he has."
There was no resisting such arguments. I said to my English friend, "Let
us go out; do not tell him who I am; I show the white feather; he beats
me."
He followed us to the door, and seeing the rabble in the street, he
called out, "ladies and gentlemen, I beg to draw your attention to the
respectable character of my visitors," pointing to us as we walked away.
I called upon him a couple of days afterwards; told him who I was, and
said:
"My friend, you are an excellent showman, but you have selected a bad
location."
He replied, "This is true, sir; I feel that all my talents are thrown
away; but what can I do?"
"You can go to America," I replied. "You can give full play to your
faculties over there; you will find plenty of elbowroom in America; I
will engage you for two years; after that you will be able to go on your
own account."
He accepted my offer and remained two years in my New York Museum. He
then went to New Orleans and carried on a traveling show business during
the summer. To-day he is worth sixty thousand dollars, simply because he
selected the right vocation and also secured the proper location. The
old proverb says, "Three removes are as bad as a fire," but when a man
is in the fire, it matters but little how soon or how often he removes.
AVOID DEBT
Young men starting in life should avoid running into debt. There is
scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt. It is a slavish
position to get ill, yet we find many a young man, hardly out of his
"teens," running in debt. He meets a chum and says, "Look at this: I
have got trusted for a new suit of clothes." He seems to look upon the
clothes as so much given to him; well, it frequently is so, but, if he
succeeds in paying and then gets trusted again, he is adopting a habit
which will keep him in poverty through life. Debt robs a man of his
self-respect, and makes him almost despise himself. Grunting and
groaning and working for what he has eaten up or worn out, and now when
he is called upon to pay up, he has nothing to show for his money; this
is properly termed "working for a dead horse." I do not speak of
merchants buying and selling on credit, or of those who buy on credit in
order to turn the purchase to a profit. The old Quaker said to his
farmer son, "John, never get trusted; but if thee gets trusted for
anything, let it be for 'manure,' because that will help thee pay it
back again."
Mr. Beecher advised young men to get in debt if they could to a small
amount in the purchase of land, in the country districts. "If a young
man," he says, "will only get in debt for some land and then get
married, these two things will keep him straight, or nothing will." This
may be safe to a limited extent, but getting in debt for what you eat
and drink and wear is to be avoided. Some families have a foolish habit
of getting credit at "the stores," and thus frequently purchase many
things which might have been dispensed with.
It is all very well to say; "I have got trusted for sixty days, and if I
don't have the money the creditor will think nothing about it." There is
no class of people in the world, who have such good memories as
creditors. When the sixty days run out, you will have to pay. If you do
not pay, you will break your promise, and probably resort to a
falsehood. You may make some excuse or get in debt elsewhere to pay it,
but that only involves you the deeper.
A good-looking, lazy young fellow, was the apprentice boy, Horatio. His
employer said, "Horatio, did you ever see a snail?" "I - think - I -
have," he drawled out. "You must have met him then, for I am sure you
never overtook one," said the "boss." Your creditor will meet you or
overtake you and say, "Now, my young friend, you agreed to pay me; you
have not done it, you must give me your note." You give the note on
interest and it commences working against you; "it is a dead horse." The
creditor goes to bed at night and wakes up in the morning better off
than when he retired to bed, because his interest has increased during
the night, but you grow poorer while you are sleeping, for the interest
is accumulating against you.
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