Don't Depend on Father.
By Editor
STAND up here young man, and let me talk with you. You have trusted alone to the contents of "father's purse," or to his fair fame for your influence or success in business. Think you that "father" has attained to eminence in his profession but by unwearied industry, or that he has amassed a fortune honestly without energy and activity? You should know that the faculty requisite for the acquiring of fame and fortune is essential to, nay, inseparable from, the attaining of either of these. Suppose father has the "rocks" in abundance, if you never earned anything for him, you have no more business with those "rocks" than a gosling has with a tortoise. And if he allows you to meddle with them before you have learned their value by your own industry, he perpetuates untold mischief. And if the old gentleman is lavish of his cash towards you, while he allows you to idle away your time, you had better leave him; yes, run away, sooner than be made an imbecile or a scoundrel through so corrupting an influence. Sooner or later you must learn to rely on your own resources, or you will not be anybody. If you have never helped yourself at all, if you have become idle, if you have eaten father's bread and butter, cut a swell in father's buggy, and tried to put on father's influence and reputation, you might better have been a poor errand boy, the son of a chimney-sweep, or a boot-black—and indeed, I would not swap with you the situation of a poor, half-starved, motherless calf! Miserable objects are you, that depend entirely upon your parents, playing gentleman, alias dandy loafer. What in the name of common sense are you thinking about? Wake up there! Go work with either your hands or brains, or both, and do something! Don't merely have it to boast that you have grown in father's house—that you have vegetated as other greenhorns! but let folks know that you count one. Come, off with your coat, clinch the saw, the plow handles, the scythe, the axe, the spade, the pickaxe—anything to enable you to stir your blood! "Fly 'round and tear your jacket," rather than be the recipient of the old gentleman's bounty. Sooner than play the dandy at dad's expense, hire yourself out to some potato patch; let yourself out to stop hog holes or watch the bars; and when you think yourself entitled to a resting spell, do it on your own hook. If you have no other means of having fun of your own, buy with your earnings an empty barrel, and put your head into it and hallo, and roll down hill. Don't, for pity's sake, make the old gentleman do everything, and you live at your ease. Look about you, you well-dressed, smooth-faced, do-nothing drones! Who are they that have worth and influence in society? Are they those that have depended alone on the old gentleman's purse, or are they those that have climbed their way to their position by their industry and energy? True, the old gentleman's funds, or personal influence, may secure you the forms of respect, but let him lose his property, or die, and what are you?—A miserable fledgeling—a bunch of flesh and bones that needs to be taken care of! Again we say, wake up—get up in the morning—turn round, at least twice before breakfast—help the old man—give him now and then a generous lift in business—learn how, take the lead, and not depend forever on being led; and you have no idea how the discipline will benefit you. Do this, and our word for it, you will seem to breathe a new atmosphere, possess a new frame, tread on new earth, wake a new destiny—and you may then begin to aspire to manhood. Take off, then, that ring from your lily finger, break your cane, shave your upper lip, hold up your head, and by all means, never again eat the bread of idleness, nor depend on father.—Sel.