ROUND BOYS IN SQUARE HOLES
The high prize of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born
with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment and
happiness.--EMERSON.
There is hardly a poet, artist, philosopher, or man of science
mentioned in the history of the human intellect, whose genius was not
opposed by parents, guardians, or teachers. In these cases Nature
seems to have triumphed by direct interposition; to have insisted on
her darlings having their rights, and encouraged disobedience, secrecy,
falsehood, even flight from home and occasional vagabondism, rather
than the world should lose what it cost her so much pains to
produce.--E. P. WHIPPLE.
I hear a voice you cannot hear,
Which says, I must not stay;
I see a hand you cannot see,
Which beckons me away.
TICKELL.
"James Watt, I never saw such an idle young fellow as you are," said
his grandmother; "do take a book and employ yourself usefully. For the
last half-hour you have not spoken a single word. Do you know what you
have been doing all this time? Why, you have taken off and replaced,
and taken off again, the teapot lid, and you have held alternately in
the steam, first a saucer and then a spoon, and you have busied
yourself in examining and, collecting together the little drops formed
by the condensation of the steam on the surface of the china and the
silver. Now, are you not ashamed to waste your time in this
disgraceful manner?"
The world has certainly gained much through the old lady's failure to
tell James how he could employ his time to better advantage!
"But I'm good for something," pleaded a young man whom a merchant was
about to discharge for his bluntness. "You are good for nothing as a
salesman," said his employer. "I am sure I can be useful," said the
youth. "How? Tell me how." "I don't know, sir, I don't know." "Nor
do I," said the merchant, laughing at the earnestness of his clerk.
"Only don't put me away, sir, don't put me away. Try me at something
besides selling. I cannot sell; I know I cannot sell." "I know that,
too," said the principal; "that is what is wrong." "But I can make
myself useful somehow," persisted the young man; "I know I can." He
was placed in the counting-house, where his aptitude for figures soon
showed itself, and in a few years he became not only chief cashier in
the large store, but an eminent accountant.
You cannot look into a cradle and read the secret message traced by a
divine hand and wrapped up in that bit of clay, any more than you can
see the North Star in the magnetic needle. God has loaded the needle
of that young life so it will point to the star of its own destiny; and
though you may pull it around by artificial advice and unnatural
education, and compel it to point to the star which presides over
poetry, art, law, medicine, or whatever your own pet calling is until
you have wasted years of a precious life, yet, when once free, the
needle flies back to its own star.
"Rue it as he may, repent it as he often does," says Robert Waters,
"the man of genius is drawn by an irresistible impulse to the
occupation for which he was created. No matter by what difficulties
surrounded, no matter how unpromising the prospect, this occupation is
the only one which he will pursue with interest and pleasure. When his
efforts fail to procure means of subsistence, and he finds himself poor
and neglected, he may, like Burns, often look back with a sigh and
think how much better off he would be had he pursued some other
occupation, but he will stick to his favorite pursuit nevertheless."
Civilization will mark its highest tide when every man has chosen his
proper work. No man can be ideally successful until he has found his
place. Like a locomotive, he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere
else. "Like a boat on a river," says Emerson, "every boy runs against
obstructions on every side but one. On that side all obstruction is
taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an
infinite sea."
Only a Dickens can write the history of "Boy Slavery," of boys whose
aspirations and longings have been silenced forever by ignorant
parents; of boys persecuted as lazy, stupid, or fickle, simply because
they were out of their places; of square boys forced into round holes,
and oppressed because they did not fit; of boys compelled to pore over
dry theological books when the voice within continually cried "Law,"
"Medicine," "Art," "Science," or "Business"; of boys tortured because
they were not enthusiastic in employments which they loathed, and
against which every fiber of their being was uttering perpetual protest.
It is often a narrow selfishness in a father which leads him to wish
his son a reproduction of himself. "You are trying to make that boy
another you. One is enough," said Emerson. John Jacob Astor's father
wished his son to be his successor as a butcher, but the instinct of
commercial enterprise was too strong in the future merchant.
Nature never duplicates men. She breaks the pattern at every birth.
The magic combination is never used but once. Frederick the Great was
terribly abused because he had a passion for art and music and did not
care for military drill. His father hated the fine arts and imprisoned
him. He even contemplated killing his son, but his own death placed
Frederick on the throne at the age of twenty-eight. This boy, who,
because he loved art and music, was thought good for nothing, made
Prussia one of the greatest nations of Europe.
How stupid and clumsy is the blinking eagle at perch, but how keen his
glance, how steady and true his curves, when turning his powerful wing
against the clear blue sky!
Ignorant parents compelled the boy Arkwright to become a barber's
apprentice, but Nature had locked up in his brain a cunning device
destined to bless humanity and to do the drudgery of millions of
England's poor; so he must needs say "hands off" even to his parents,
as Christ said to his mother, "Wist ye not that I must be about my
Father's business?"
Galileo was set apart for a physician, but when compelled to study
anatomy and physiology, he would hide his Euclid and Archimedes and
stealthily work out the abstruse problems. He was only eighteen when
he discovered the principle of the pendulum in a lamp left swinging in
the cathedral at Pisa. He invented both the microscope and telescope,
enlarging knowledge of the vast and minute alike.
The parents of Michael Angelo had declared that no son of theirs should
ever follow the discreditable profession of an artist, and even
punished him for covering the walls and furniture with sketches; but
the fire burning in his breast was kindled by the Divine Artist, and
would not let him rest until he had immortalized himself in the
architecture of St. Peter's, in the marble of his Moses, and on the
walls of the Sistine Chapel.
Pascal's father determined that his son should teach the dead
languages, but the voice of mathematics drowned every other call,
haunting the boy until he laid aside his grammar for Euclid.
The father of Joshua Reynolds rebuked his son for drawing pictures, and
wrote on one: "Done by Joshua out of pure idleness." Yet this "idle
boy" became one of the founders of the Royal Academy.
Turner was intended for a barber in Maiden Lane, but became the
greatest landscape-painter of modern times.
Claude Lorraine, the painter, was apprenticed to a pastry-cook;
Molière, the author, to an upholsterer; and Guido, the famous painter
of Aurora, was sent to a music school.
Schiller was sent to study surgery in the military school at Stuttgart,
but in secret he produced his first play, "The Robbers," the first
performance of which he had to witness in disguise. The irksomeness of
his prison-like school so galled him, and his longing for authorship so
allured him, that he ventured, penniless, into the inhospitable world
of letters. A kind lady aided him, and soon he produced the two
splendid dramas which made him immortal.
The physician Handel wished his son to become a lawyer, and so tried to
discourage his fondness for music. But the boy got an old spinet and
practiced on it secretly in a hayloft. When the doctor visited a
brother in the service of the Duke of Weisenfelds, he took his son with
him. The boy wandered unobserved to the organ in a chapel, and soon
had a private concert under full blast. The duke happened to hear the
performance, and wondered who could possibly combine so much melody
with so much evident unfamiliarity with the instrument. The boy was
brought before him, and the duke, instead of blaming him for disturbing
the organ, praised his performance, and persuaded Dr. Handel to let his
son follow his bent.
Daniel Defoe had been a trader, a soldier, a merchant, a secretary, a
factory manager, a commissioner's accountant, an envoy, and an author
of several indifferent books, before he wrote his masterpiece,
"Robinson Crusoe."
Wilson, the ornithologist, failed in five different professions before
he found his place.
Erskine spent four years in the navy, and then, in the hope of more
rapid promotion, joined the army. After serving more than two years,
he one day, out of curiosity, attended a court, in the town where his
regiment was quartered. The presiding judge, an acquaintance, invited
Erskine to sit near him, and said that the pleaders at the bar were
among the most eminent lawyers of Great Britain. Erskine took their
measure as they spoke, and believed he could excel them. He at once
began the study of law, in which he eventually soon stood alone as the
greatest forensic orator of his country.
A. T. Stewart studied for the ministry, and became a teacher, before he
drifted into his proper calling as a merchant, through the accident of
having lent money to a friend. The latter, with failure imminent,
insisted that his creditor should take the shop as the only means of
securing the money.
"Jonathan," said Mr. Chase, when his son told of having nearly fitted
himself for college, "thou shalt go down to the machine-shop on Monday
morning." It was many years before Jonathan escaped from the shop, to
work his way up to the position of a man of great influence as a United
States Senator from Rhode Island.
It has been well said that if God should commission two angels, one to
sweep a street crossing, and the other to rule an empire, they could
not be induced to exchange callings. Not less true is it that he who
feels that God has given him a particular work to do can be happy only
when earnestly engaged in its performance. Happy the youth who finds
the place which his dreams have pictured! If he does not fill that
place, he will not fill any to the satisfaction of himself or others.
Nature never lets a man rest until he has found his place. She haunts
him and drives him until all his faculties give their consent and he
falls into his proper niche. A parent might just as well decide that
the magnetic needle will point to Venus or Jupiter without trying it,
as to decide what profession his son shall adopt.
What a ridiculous exhibition a great truck-horse would make on the
race-track; yet this is no more incongruous than the popular idea that
law, medicine, and theology are the only desirable professions. How
ridiculous, too, for fifty-two per cent. of our American college
graduates to study law! How many young men become poor clergymen by
trying to imitate their fathers who were good ones; of poor doctors and
lawyers for the same reason! The country is full of men who are out of
place, "disappointed, soured, ruined, out of office, out of money, out
of credit, out of courage, out at elbows, out in the cold." The fact
is, nearly every college graduate who succeeds in the true sense of the
word, prepares himself in school, but makes himself after he is
graduated. The best thing his teachers have taught him is _how_ to
study. The moment he is beyond the college walls he ceases to use
books and helps which do not feed him, and seizes upon those that do.
[Illustration: Ulysses S. Grant]
We must not jump to the conclusion that because a man has not succeeded
in what he has really tried to do with all his might, he cannot succeed
at anything. Look at a fish floundering on the sand as though he would
tear himself to pieces. But look again: a huge wave breaks higher up
the beach and covers the unfortunate creature. The moment his fins
feel the water, he is himself again, and darts like a flash through the
waves. His fins mean something now, while before they beat the air and
earth in vain, a hindrance instead of a help.
If you fail after doing your level best, examine the work attempted,
and see if it really be in the line of your bent or power of
achievement. Cowper failed as a lawyer. He was so timid that he could
not plead a case, but he wrote some of our finest poems. Molière found
that he was not adapted to the work of a lawyer, but he left a great
name in literature. Voltaire and Petrarch abandoned the law, the
former choosing philosophy, the latter, poetry. Cromwell was a farmer
until forty years old.
Very few of us, before we reach our teens, show great genius or even
remarkable talent for any line of work or study. The great majority of
boys and girls, even when given all the latitude and longitude heart
could desire, find it very difficult before their fifteenth or even
before their twentieth year to decide what to do for a living. Each
knocks at the portals of the mind, demanding a wonderful aptitude for
some definite line of work, but it is not there. That is no reason why
the duty at hand should be put off, or why the labor that naturally
falls to one's lot should not be done well. Samuel Smiles was trained
to a profession which was not to his taste, yet he practiced it so
faithfully that it helped him to authorship, for which he was well
fitted.
Fidelity to the work or everyday duties at hand, and a genuine feeling
of responsibility to our parents or employers, ourselves, and our God,
will eventually bring most of us into the right niches at the proper
time.
Garfield would not have become President if he had not previously been
a zealous teacher, a responsible soldier, a conscientious statesman.
Neither Lincoln nor Grant started as a baby with a precocity for the
White House, or an irresistible genius for ruling men. So no one
should be disappointed because he was not endowed with tremendous gifts
in the cradle. His business is to do the best he can wherever his lot
may be cast, and advance at every honorable opportunity in the
direction towards which the inward monitor points. Let duty be the
guiding-star, and success will surely be the crown, to the full measure
of one's ability and industry.
What career? What shall my life's work be?
If instinct and heart ask for carpentry, be a carpenter; if for
medicine, be a physician. With a firm choice and earnest work, a young
man or woman cannot help but succeed. But if there be no instinct, or
if it be weak or faint, one should choose cautiously along the line of
his best adaptability and opportunity. No one need doubt that the
world has use for him. True success lies in acting well your part, and
this every one can do. Better be a first-rate hod-carrier than a
second-rate anything.
The world has been very kind to many who were once known as dunces or
blockheads, after they have become very successful; but it was very
cross to them while they were struggling through discouragement and
misinterpretation. Give every boy and girl a fair chance and
reasonable encouragement, and do not condemn them because of even a
large degree of downright stupidity; for many so-called
good-for-nothing boys, blockheads, numskulls, dullards, or dunces, were
only boys out of their places, round boys forced into square holes.
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 class 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 manuscript of the
"Vicar of Wakefield," sold it to the publishers, and paid the debt.
This manuscript 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
Plassey 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 class, 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.