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 canals, 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 advertisement, 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 class 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
bass 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 advertisement
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 pronounce 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 constitute a man.
Go-at-it-iveness is the first requisite for success.
Stick-to-it-iveness is the second. Under ordinary circumstances, 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 competition 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 Staël 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 snowballs at Brienne.
All these showed their bent while young, and followed it in active
life. But precocity is not common, and, except in rare cases, we must
discover the bias in our natures, and not wait for the proclivity to
make itself manifest. When found, it is worth more to us than a vein
of gold.
"_I_ do not forbid you to preach," said a Bishop to a young clergyman,
"but nature does."
Lowell said: "It is the vain endeavor to make ourselves what we are not
that has strewn history with so many broken purposes, and lives left in
the rough."
You have not found your place until all your faculties are roused, and
your whole nature consents and approves of the work you are doing; not
until you are so enthusiastic in it that you take it to bed with you.
You may be forced to drudge at uncongenial toil for a time, but
emancipate yourself as soon as possible. Carey, the "Consecrated
Cobbler," before he went as a missionary said: "My business is to
preach the gospel. I cobble shoes to pay expenses."
If your vocation be only a humble one, elevate it with more manhood
than others put into it. Put into it brains and heart and energy and
economy. Broaden it by originality of methods. Extend it by
enterprise and industry. Study it as you would a profession. Learn
everything that is to be known about it. Concentrate your faculties
upon it, for the greatest achievements are reserved for the man of
single aim, in whom no rival powers divide the empire of the soul.
_Better adorn your own than seek another's place_.
Go to the bottom of your business if you would climb to the top.
Nothing is small which concerns your business. Master every detail.
This was the secret of A. T. Stewart's and of John Jacob Astor's great
success. They knew everything about their business.
As love is the only excuse for marriage, and the only thing which will
carry one safely through the troubles and vexations of married life, so
love for an occupation is the only thing which will carry one safely
and surely through the troubles which overwhelm ninety-five out of
every one hundred who choose the life of a merchant, and very many in
every other career.
A famous Englishman said to his nephew, "Don't choose medicine, for we
have never had a murderer in our family, and the chances are that in
your ignorance you may kill a patient; as to the law, no prudent man is
willing to risk his life or his fortune to a young lawyer, who has not
only no experience, but is generally too conceited to know the risks he
incurs for his client, who alone is the loser; therefore, as the
mistakes of a clergyman in doctrine or advice to his parishioners
cannot be clearly determined in this world, I advise you by all means
to enter the church."
"I felt that I was in the world to do something, and thought I must,"
said Whittier, thus giving the secret of his great power. It is the
man who must enter law, literature, medicine, the ministry, or any
other of the overstocked professions, who will succeed. His certain
call, that is his love for it, and his fidelity to it, are the
imperious factors of his career. If a man enters a profession simply
because his grandfather made a great name in it, or his mother wants
him to, with no love or adaptability for it, it were far better for him
to be a motor-man on an electric car at a dollar and seventy-five cents
a day. In the humbler work his intelligence may make him a leader; in
the other career he might do as much harm as a bowlder rolled from its
place upon a railroad track, a menace to the next express.
Only a few years ago marriage was the only "sphere" open to girls, and
the single woman had to face the disapproval of her friends. Lessing
said: "The woman who thinks is like a man who puts on rouge,
ridiculous." Not many years have elapsed since the ambitious woman who
ventured to study or write would keep a bit of embroidery at hand to
throw over her book or manuscript when callers entered. Dr. Gregory
said to his daughters: "If you happen to have any learning, keep it a
profound secret from the men, who generally look with a jealous and
malignant eye on a woman of great parts and a cultivated
understanding." Women who wrote books in those days would deny the
charge as though a public disgrace.
All this has changed, and what a change it is! As Frances Willard
said, the greatest discovery of the century is the discovery of woman.
We have emancipated her, and are opening countless opportunities for
our girls outside of marriage. Formerly only a boy could choose a
career; now his sister can do the same. This freedom is one of the
greatest glories of the twentieth century. But with freedom comes
responsibility, and under these changed conditions every girl should
have a definite aim.
Dr. Hall says that the world has urgent need of "girls who are mother's
right hand; girls who can cuddle the little ones next best to mamma,
and smooth out the tangles in the domestic skein when thing's get
twisted; girls whom father takes comfort in for something better than
beauty, and the big brothers are proud of for something that outranks
the ability to dance or shine in society. Next, we want girls of
sense,--girls who have a standard of their own, regardless of
conventionalities, and are independent enough to live up to it; girls
who simply won't wear a trailing dress on the street to gather up
microbes and all sorts of defilement; girls who don't wear a high hat
to the theater, or lacerate their feet and endanger their health with
high heels and corsets; girls who will wear what is pretty and becoming
and snap their fingers at the dictates of fashion when fashion is
horrid and silly. And we want good girls,--girls who are sweet, right
straight out from the heart to the lips; innocent and pure and simple
girls, with less knowledge of sin and duplicity and evil-doing at
twenty than the pert little schoolgirl of ten has all too often. And
we want careful girls and prudent girls, who think enough of the
generous father who toils to maintain them in comfort, and of the
gentle mother who denies herself much that they may have so many pretty
things, to count the cost and draw the line between the essentials and
non-essentials; girls who strive to save and not to spend; girls who
are unselfish and eager to be a joy and a comfort in the home rather
than an expense and a useless burden. We want girls with
hearts,--girls who are full of tenderness and sympathy, with tears that
flow for other people's ills, and smiles that light outward their own
beautiful thoughts. We have lots of clever girls, and brilliant girls,
and witty girls. Give us a consignment of jolly girls, warm-hearted
and impulsive girls; kind and entertaining to their own folks, and with
little desire to shine in the garish world. With a few such girls
scattered around, life would freshen up for all of us, as the weather
does under the spell of summer showers."
"They talk about a woman's sphere,
As though it had a limit;
There's not a place in earth or heaven,
There's not a task to mankind given,
There's not a blessing or a woe,
There's not a whisper, Yes or No,
There's not a life, or death, or birth,
That has a feather's weight of worth,
Without a woman in it."
"Do that which is assigned you," says Emerson, "and you cannot hope too
much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance
brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of
the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from all
these."
"The best way for a young man to begin, who is without friends or
influence," said Russell Sage, "is, first, by getting a position;
second, keeping his mouth shut; third, observing; fourth, being
faithful; fifth, making his employer think he would be lost in a fog
without him; and sixth, being polite."
"Close application, integrity, attention to details, discreet
advertising," are given as the four steps to success by John Wanamaker,
whose motto is, "Do the next thing."
Whatever you do in life, be greater than your calling. Most people
look upon an occupation or calling as a mere expedient for earning a
living. What a mean, narrow view to take of what was intended for the
great school of life, the great man developer, the character-builder;
that which should broaden, deepen, heighten, and round out into
symmetry, harmony, and beauty all the God-given faculties within us!
How we shrink from the task and evade the lessons which were intended
for the unfolding of life's great possibilities into usefulness and
power, as the sun unfolds into beauty and fragrance the petals of the
flower!
I am glad to think
I am not bound to make the world go round;
But only to discover and to do,
With cheerful heart, the work that God appoints.
JEAN INGELOW.
"'What shall I do to be forever known?'
Thy duty ever!
'This did full many who yet sleep all unknown,'--
Oh, never, never!
Think'st thou, perchance, that they remain unknown
Whom thou know'st not?
By angel trumps in heaven their praise is blown,
Divine their lot."