A Short Talk with the Boys.
Now, my lad, if you have arrived at the age of sixteen, it is time you began to think of a trade or profession. This isn't a country in which you can live on your father's name or money for any length of time; and even if you are calculating on coming into a comfortable fortune at your majority you may see the day before you are forty that a trade would clothe and feed you. Ninety-nine out of every hundred young men of to-day must make their own future. What that future will be, depends first, how you start in. It is easy enough to answer that you intend to become a merchant, lawyer, doctor, editor, dentist, machinist, carpenter, watchmaker, and so on; but just wait a minute and examine yourself. Take your horse to the blacksmith shop and you may see the smith look over a hundred ready-made shoes before he gets one to fit. All are horseshoes, but a perfect fit is the question. Now, then, examine yourself and seek to discover what particular forte you have. You were born to fill a certain place in the world. It may be that of a carpenter or it may be that of a poet. Make no mistake in starting out. When you hear a man who has nothing in particular to work at wishing that he had learned a trade, he is talking nonsense. He had no fitness for one. Had he set out to learn any of the dozen trades you can name he would have been a failure. Every city has dozens of lawyers and doctors who live starvation lives, and more or less of preachers and artists who are seldom, if ever, mentioned by name. These men are mistakes. They have no heart to their professions, and never belonged there. I can name you carpenters, painters, blacksmiths, wagon-makers, and others who are out of work half the time, and the other half is mostly consumed in kicking and complaining against the times. It is their own fault. They are botch workmen. It is like putting an accordion under a piano and expecting it to play piano music. Had each learned the trade he was fitted for he would have excelled. You have the same idea of being a merchant that I had at your age. It was simply to buy and sell goods. That seems easy enough, but the merchant who hasn't a "knack" for the business is doomed to certain failure. Not one out of fifty clerks ever become merchants. Probably not more than three or four out of fifty are fitted to do business for themselves. A boy's idea of being a doctor is to visit the sick, cure them if possible, and collect fifty dollars; and the one who answers that he is going to make a lawyer of himself thinks of nothing but big fees and verdicts in favor of his clients. But, as I told you at the outset, if you have arrived at the age of fifteen or sixteen, it is time you looked matters squarely in the face and had some idea of your future. If you were to answer at once you would say that you would take a profession in preference to a trade. A profession means several years of hard study, quite a large cash outlay and then trials and rebuffs to get a start in business. It is one thing to graduate as a lawyer or a doctor, and quite another to pick up clients and patients. If you have fully decided on a profession be careful of your first move. If you have a large head your grandmother has doubtless many times exclaimed: "What a great lawyer this boy would make." Don't try to make one on the size of your head. We have any number of that class in the country now, and they can't pay their grocers' bills. If you can pull a sliver out of your finger without winking, it may be a sign that you would make a great surgeon. It may also be a sign that you are born to be a butcher. How will you know what to pursue? Your own feelings are the safest guide. If left to your parents and to circumstances you may be forced into a trade or profession which you can never make a success. When you come to realize that you must make your own way in life your particular forte will be apt to reveal itself. One of the best lawyers in Detroit was intended for the ministry; another served three years as a journalist, but all the time feeling that he was out of his element; another was forced by his father to learn the trade of harnessmaker. I know a machinist who at first studied medicine; of a watchmaker who tried to become a lawyer; of a carpenter who threw away three years of his life trying to become a dentist. After you have selected your profession or trade, what then? Strive to master it in all its details and to excel. If you become a carpenter, don't be satisfied when you can saw and plane and match. Don't be satisfied with $2 per day. Make yourself worth $3. Master details, and push yourself from carpenter to builder. Don't imagine that a man in search of a lawyer walks down the street and drops in at the first sign hanging out. It is the lawyer who has climbed above his fellows that he seeks out. If our friends are ill we want the best doctor. We want the man who has made himself the best by study and energy. The blacksmith who is content to mend old wagons will never iron a new one. The machinist who stands at the lathe to do about so much work in ten hours need not hope to be better off. It is the men who put their heart into what they do who succeed. I can name you scores of instances where skilled workmen have been taken as partners in large factories. The clerk who is capable, honest, and persevering, is bound to win a higher position. The joiner who does his work to last for years instead of months is never out of work. There are house painters who are satisfied to stand on a ladder or scaffold at $2.50 per day. There are other house painters whose energy and enthusiasm have made them sign writers and decorators and raised their wages to $40 per week. It is not so much what you do, but how you do it, that brings prosperity.—Christian Union.