Wellington was considered a dunce by his mother. At Eton he was called dull, idle, slow, and was about the last boy in school of whom anything was expected. He showed no talent, and had no desire to enter the army. His industry and perseverance were his only redeeming characteristics in the eyes of his parents and teachers. But at forty-six he had defeated the greatest general living, except himself.
Goldsmith was the laughing-stock of his schoolmasters. He was graduated "Wooden Spoon," a college name for a dunce. He tried to enter a cla.s.s in surgery, but was rejected. He was driven to literature. Goldsmith found himself totally unfit for the duties of a physician; but who else could have written the "Vicar of Wakefield" or the "Deserted Village"? Dr. Johnson found him very poor and about to be arrested for debt. He made Goldsmith give him the ma.n.u.script of the "Vicar of Wakefield," sold it to the publishers, and paid the debt.
This ma.n.u.script made its author famous.
Robert Clive bore the name of "dunce" and "reprobate" at school, but at thirty-two, with three thousand men, he defeated fifty thousand at Pla.s.sey and laid the foundation of the British Empire in India. Sir Walter Scott was called a blockhead by his teacher. When Byron happened to get ahead of his cla.s.s, the master would say: "Now, Jordie, let me see how soon you will be at the foot again."
Young Linnaeus was called by his teachers almost a blockhead. Not finding him fit for the church, his parents sent him to college to study medicine. But the silent teacher within, greater and wiser than all others, led him to the fields; and neither sickness, misfortune, nor poverty could drive him from the study of botany, the choice of his heart, and he became the greatest botanist of his age.
Richard B. Sheridan"s mother tried in vain to teach him the most elementary studies. The mother"s death aroused slumbering talents, as has happened in hundreds of cases, and he became one of the most brilliant men of his age.
Samuel Drew was one of the dullest and most listless boys in his neighborhood, yet after an accident by which he nearly lost his life, and after the death of his brother, he became so studious and industrious that he could not bear to lose a moment. He read at every meal, using all the time he could get for self-improvement. He said that Paine"s "Age of Reason" made him an author, for it was by his attempt to refute its arguments that he was first known as a strong, vigorous writer.
It has been well said that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.
CHAPTER X
WHAT CAREER?
Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five-barred gate.
A dog by instinct turns aside Who sees the ditch too deep and wide.
But man we find the only creature Who, led by folly, combats nature; Who, when she loudly cries--Forbear!
With obstinacy fixes there; And where his genius least inclines, Absurdly bends his whole designs.
SWIFT.
The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or ca.n.a.ls, or statues, or songs.--EMERSON.
Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.--SYDNEY SMITH.
"Every man has got a Fort," said Artemus Ward. "It"s some men"s fort to do one thing, and some other men"s fort to do another, while there is numeris shiftless critters goin" round loose whose fort is not to do nothin".
"Twice I"ve endevered to do things which they wasn"t my Fort. The first time was when I undertook to lick a owdashus cuss who cut a hole in my tent and krawld threw. Sez I, "My jentle sir, go out, or I shall fall onto you putty hevy." Sez he, "Wade in, Old Wax Figgers,"
whereupon I went for him, but he cawt me powerful on the hed and knockt me threw the tent into a cow pastur. He pursood the attack and flung me into a mud puddle. As I aroze and rung out my drencht garmints, I concluded fitin was n"t my fort.
"I"le now rize the curtain upon seen 2nd. It is rarely seldum that I seek consolation in the Flowin Bole. But in a certain town in Injianny in the Faul of 18--, my orgin grinder got sick with the fever and died.
I never felt so ashamed in my life, and I thought I"d hist in a few swallers of suthin strengthnin. Konsequents was, I histed so much I didn"t zackly know whereabouts I was. I turned my livin" wild beasts of Pray loose into the streets, and split all my wax-works.
"I then Bet I cood play hoss. So I hitched myself to a kanawl bote, there bein" two other hosses behind and anuther ahead of me. But the hosses bein" onused to such a arrangemunt, begun to kick and squeal and rair up. Konsequents was, I was kicked vilently in the stummuck and back, and presently, I found myself in the kanawl with the other hosses, kikin and yellin like a tribe of Cusscaroorus savajis. I was rescood, and as I was bein carried to the tavern on a hemlock bored I sed in a feeble voice, "Boys, playin" hoss isn"t my Fort."
"_Moral: Never don"t do nothin" which isn"t your Fort, for ef you do you"ll find yourself splashin" round in the kanawl, figuratively speakin._"
The following advertis.e.m.e.nt, which appeared day after day in a Western paper, did not bring a single reply:--
"Wanted.--Situation by a Practical Printer, who is competent to take charge of any department in a printing and publishing house. Would accept a professorship in any of the academies. Has no objection to teach ornamental painting and penmanship, geometry, trigonometry, and many other sciences. Has had some experience as a lay preacher. Would have no objection to form a small cla.s.s of young ladies and gentlemen to instruct them in the higher branches. To a dentist or chiropodist he would be invaluable; or he would cheerfully accept a position as ba.s.s or tenor singer in a choir."
At length there appeared this addition to the notice:--
"P. S. Will accept an offer to saw and split wood at less than the usual rates." This secured a situation at once, and the advertis.e.m.e.nt was seen no more.
Your talent is your _call_. Your legitimate destiny speaks in your character. If you have found your place, your occupation has the consent of every faculty of your being.
If possible, choose that occupation which focuses the largest amount of your experience and tastes. You will then not only have a congenial vocation, but also will utilize largely your skill and business knowledge, which is your true capital.
_Follow your bent_. You cannot long fight successfully against your aspirations. Parents, friends, or misfortune may stifle and suppress the longings of the heart, by compelling you to perform unwelcome tasks; but, like a volcano, the inner fire will burst the crusts which confine it and will pour forth its pent-up genius in eloquence, in song, in art, or in some favorite industry. Beware of "a talent which you cannot hope to practice in perfection." Nature hates all botched and half-finished work, and will p.r.o.nounce her curse upon it.
Better be the Napoleon of bootblacks, or the Alexander of chimney-sweeps, let us say with Matthew Arnold, than a shallow-brained attorney who, like necessity, knows no law.
Half the world seems to have found uncongenial occupation, as though the human race had been shaken up together and exchanged places in the operation. A servant girl is trying to teach, and a natural teacher is tending store. Good farmers are murdering the law, while Choates and Websters are running down farms, each tortured by the consciousness of unfulfilled destiny. Boys are pining in factories who should be wrestling with Greek and Latin, and hundreds are chafing beneath unnatural loads in college who should be on the farm or before the mast. Artists are spreading "daubs" on canvas who should be whitewashing board fences. Behind counters stand clerks who hate the yard-stick and neglect their work to dream of other occupations. A good shoemaker writes a few verses for the village paper, his friends call him a poet, and the last, with which he is familiar, is abandoned for the pen, which he uses awkwardly. Other shoemakers are cobbling in Congress, while statesmen are pounding shoe-lasts. Laymen are murdering sermons while Beechers and Whitefields are failing as merchants, and people are wondering what can be the cause of empty pews. A boy who is always making something with tools is railroaded through the university and started on the road to inferiority in one of the "three honorable professions." Real surgeons are handling the meat-saw and cleaver, while butchers are amputating human limbs. How fortunate that--
"There"s a divinity that shapes our ends, _Rough-hew them how we will._"
"He that hath a trade," says Franklin, "hath an estate; and he that hath a calling hath a place of profit and honor. A plowman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees."
A man"s business does more to make him than anything else. It hardens his muscles, strengthens his body, quickens his blood, sharpens his mind, corrects his judgment, wakes up his inventive genius, puts his wits to work, starts him on the race of life, arouses his ambition, makes him feel that he is a man and must fill a man"s shoes, do a man"s work, bear a man"s part in life, and show himself a man in that part.
No man feels himself a man who is not doing a man"s business. A man without employment is not a man. He does not prove by his works that he is a man. A hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle do not make a man. A good cranium full of brains is not a man. The bone and muscle and brain must know how to do a man"s work, think a man"s thoughts, mark out a man"s path, and bear a man"s weight of character and duty before they const.i.tute a man.
Go-at-it-iveness is the first requisite for success.
Stick-to-it-iveness is the second. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, and with practical common sense to guide him, one who has these requisites will not fail.
Don"t wait for a higher position or a larger salary. Enlarge the position you already occupy; put originality of method into it. Fill it as it never was filled before. Be more prompt, more energetic, more thorough, more polite than your predecessor or fellow workmen. Study your business, devise new modes of operation, be able to give your employer points. The art lies not in giving satisfaction merely, not in simply filling your place, but in doing better than was expected, in surprising your employer; and the reward will be a better place and a larger salary.
When out of work, take the first respectable job that offers, heeding not the disproportion between your faculties and your task. If you put your manhood into your labor, you will soon be given something better to do.
This question of a right aim in life has become exceedingly perplexing in our complicated age. It is not a difficult problem to solve when one is the son of a Zulu or the daughter of a Bedouin. The condition of the savage hardly admits of but one choice; but as one rises higher in the scale of civilization and creeps nearer to the great centers of activity, the difficulty of a correct decision increases with its importance. In proportion as one is hard pressed in compet.i.tion is it of the sternest necessity for him to choose the right aim, so as to be able to throw the whole of his energy and enthusiasm into the struggle for success. The dissipation of strength or hope is fatal to prosperity even in the most attractive field.
Gladstone says there is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body, or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted.
"Blessed is he who has found his work," says Carlyle. "Let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work--a life purpose; he has found it, and will follow it."
In choosing an occupation, do not ask yourself how you can make the most money or gain the most notoriety, but choose that work which will call out all your powers and develop your manhood into the greatest strength and symmetry. Not money, not notoriety, not fame even, but power is what you want. Manhood is greater than wealth, grander than fame. Character is greater than any career. Each faculty must be educated, and any deficiency in its training will appear in whatever you do. The hand must be educated to be graceful, steady, and strong.
The eye must be educated to be alert, discriminating, and microscopic.
The heart must be educated to be tender, sympathetic, and true. The memory must be drilled for years in accuracy, retention, and comprehensiveness. The world does not demand that you be a lawyer, minister, doctor, farmer, scientist, or merchant; it does not dictate what you shall do, but it does require that you be a master in whatever you undertake. If you are a master in your line, the world will applaud you and all doors will fly open to you. But it condemns all botches, abortions, and failures.
"Whoever is well educated to discharge the duty of a man," says Rousseau, "cannot be badly prepared to fill any of those offices that have relation to him. It matters little to me whether my pupils be designed for the army, the pulpit, or the bar. Nature has destined us to the offices of human life antecedent to our destination concerning society. To live is the profession I would teach him. When I have done with him, it is true he will be neither a soldier, a lawyer, nor a divine. Let him first be a man. Fortune may remove him from one rank to another as she pleases; he will be always found in his place."
In the great race of life common sense has the right of way. Wealth, a diploma, a pedigree, talent, genius, without tact and common sense, cut but a small figure. The incapables and the impracticables, though loaded with diplomas and degrees, are left behind. Not what do you know, or _who_ are you, but _what_ are you, _what can you do_, is the interrogation of the century.
George Herbert has well said: "What we are is much more to us than what we do." An aim that carries in it the least element of doubt as to its justice or honor or right should be abandoned at once. The art of dishing up the wrong so as to make it look and taste like the right has never been more extensively cultivated than in our day. It is a curious fact that reason will, on pressure, overcome a man"s instinct of right. An eminent scientist has said that a man could soon reason himself out of the instinct of decency if he would only take pains and work hard enough. So when a doubtful but attractive future is placed before one, there is a great temptation to juggle with the wrong until it seems the right. Yet any aim that is immoral carries in itself the germ of certain failure, in the real sense of the word--failure that is physical and spiritual.
There is no doubt that every person has a special adaptation for his own peculiar part in life. A very few--geniuses, we call them--have this marked in an unusual degree, and very early in life.
Madame de Stael was engrossed in political philosophy at an age when other girls are dressing dolls. Mozart, when but four years old, played the clavichord and composed minuets and other pieces still extant. The little Chalmers, with solemn air and earnest gestures, would preach often from a stool in the nursery. Goethe wrote tragedies at twelve, and Grotius published an able philosophical work before he was fifteen. Pope "lisped in numbers." Chatterton wrote good poems at eleven, and Cowley published a volume of poetry in his sixteenth year.
Thomas Lawrence and Benjamin West drew likenesses almost as soon as they could walk. Liszt played in public at twelve. Canova made models in clay while a mere child. Bacon exposed the defects of Aristotle"s philosophy when but sixteen. Napoleon was at the head of armies when throwing s...o...b..a.l.l.s at Brienne.