Making Things Go

Ometimes a man who seems to succeed is at every step a failure. There is more lawful fraud committed than unlawful. Penitentiaries and the Court of “Over and Terminer” are for those clumsy rogues who do not know how to steal. The purloining of one cabbage ends in the “Tombs,” but the absconding with one hundred thousand dollars wins a castle on the Rhine. So you see that men get into jail not because they steal, but because they do not steal enoucrh. There are estates cratherini that have not within them one honest dollar.

But the general rule is that moral success is worldly success. It is easier to make a permanent fortune in honorable ways than by

MAKING THINGS GO. I//

dishonorable conduct. The devil is a poor financier. When the gold and the silver were laid down in the earth, they were sworn to serve the cause of righteousness, and they never go into the coffers of the dishonest without committing perjury. Lawful enterprise in the long run will declare larger dividends than dishonest scheming. The oil company of which Hon. Bogus Greaseback is President, and Hocus Pocus, Esq., is Secretary, at first declares twenty per cent, then ten per cent, afterward three per cent, and, last of all, nothing, leaving the widows and orphans to play the beautiful game of “Money! money! who has the money?”

But fraudulent estates do not average a continuance of more than five years. Occasionally, an old man, having gathered large property by ignoble means, may die in its possession, bequeathing it to his heirs; but when the boys get it, what with their wine, and what with their fast horses — ha! how they will make it fly!

There is an honest work for every one to do. When a child is born, his work is already pre-M pared for him. There is something in his nature which says: “Yonder is the field, the shop, the store! Come, my little man! Be busy! “No doubt Samson, when he was a boy, sometimes gave premonition of what he was going to be, amusing himself by carrying off gates, and in chasing his playmates with the jawbone of a bleached carcass, and, long before he fired off the three hundred fox-tails among the corn-shocks of the Philistines, had tried the same extreme measures on the cats of his father’s house. Cowley evinced the poet when in very early life he was wrought into enchantment by the reading of Spenser’s” Fairy Queen.” Joshua Reynolds, in boyhood, prophesied the painter by hanging sketches around his father’s house, although the disgusted father wrote under one of them: ‘’ Done by Joshua out of pure idleness!” Our own Van Derlyn began his career in boyhood by chalk sketches on the side of a blacksmith-shop.

Nature invariably hints for what she has made a child. Here is a boy cunning at a bargain. At school he is extravagantly fond of trading. He will not come home twice with the same knife, or hoop, or kite. To-morrow morning he will leave the house with an ignominious yarn-ball — a great trial to a boy on the play-ground — but at night will come back with one of India-rubber, which, under the stroke of the bat, will soar almost out of sight, and then come down with long-continued bounce! bounce! Some morning, calculating on the lowness of the apple -market, he will take a satchel full to school. Immediately there is a rush in the market. He monopolizes the business. He sells at just the right time. The vigilant school-master, finding him bartering in what are not considered lawful business hours, brings him into port, and he is compelled by this government officer to discharge his cargo in the presence of his fellows, who gape upon him like a company of stevedores. Can you doubt for a moment for what occupation he was designed? He must be a merchant.

Here is a boy of different liking. Across the brook he has thrown a dam, and whirling around is a water-wheel. He can construct l8o MAKING THINGS GO.

anything he chooses — sleds for the winter, wagons for the summer, and boats for the river. His knife is most of the time out on a whittling excursion. Down on your best carpets he plants his muddy tools. You are so pestered on the Saturdays when there is no school, it requires all of Sunday, and sharp sermons at that, to get your patience unwrlnkled. Pigeon-coops on the barn and birdhouses in the trees, attest his ingenuity. Give him a trade. He must be a mechanic.

Here is another boy. You do not know what to do with him. He is always starting an argument. He meets your reproof with a syllogism. He is always at the most inconvenient time asking, “Why?” He is on the opposite side of what you believe, but any thing for an argument. If you promised him a flogging, he would file a caveat to stop proceedings, and, dissatisfied with your decisions, he gets out a certioTari, carrying matters up to the Supreme Court of his own reason. With all this he has a glib tongue, and when fairly started, it rattles like hail on a tin roof. His destiny is plain: he must be a lawyer.

But if you should happen to have under your charge, as guardian or parent, a child not sharp enough to strike a bargain, not ingenious enough to make a sled, not loquacious enough to start an argument, not inquisitive as to the origin of things, always behind in the school, and slow on the play-ground — there is then only this alternative: If he be fat and chubby, of unconquerable appetite and enprmous digestion, and lazy withal, then send him to the city, pull the wires, and make him an alderman. But if he be long and lean, sallowcheeked, with nerves ever on the twitch, and a digestion that will not go, I know not what you will do with him unless you make him a minister. Alas! for the absurdity rampant among families, that when, because of physical incompetency, a man is fit for nothing else, he is fit to be a “legate of the skies.” Religion will never make up for lack of liver and backbone.