The Right Track

Here are thousands of persons In places where they do not belong. The bird’s wing means air, the fish’s fin means water, the horse’s hoof means solid ground; and what would happen if the bird tried the water, and the fish tried the air, happens when men get out of their naturg. element. In my watch, the spring cannot exchange places with the wheels, nor the cogs with the pivots. “Stay where I put you!” cries the watchmaker, “If you want to keep good time!” Now, the world Is only a big watch that God wound up, and the seasons are the hands which tell how fast the time Is oolne. “Stay where I put you!” says our great Creator. Or, If you prefer, human society Is a ship.

Some are to go ahead; they are the prow. Some are to stay behind and guide those who lead; they are the helm. Some are to be enthusiastic and carry the flag; they are the masts. Some are to do nothing but act as a dead weight; they are shovelled in as ballast. Some are to fume and fret and blow; they are the valves.

Our happiness and success depend on being where we belong. A scow may be admirable, and a seventy-four gun-ship may be admirable, but do not put the scow on the ocean, or the ship-of-the-line in a mill-pond. Fortune is spoken of as an old shrew, with hot water, shovel, and tongs, pursuing the innocent. But, though sometimes losing her temper, she mostly approves those who are in their sphere, and condemns those who are where they do not belong.

How, then, account for the success of such persons as Elihu Burritt and Hugh Miller — the former a blacksmith, yet showing unbounded capacity for the acquisition of language; the latter a stone-mason, and yet, as though he

were one of the old buried Titans come to life, pressing up through rocks and mountains, until, shaking from his coat a world of red sandstone, and washing off from his hands the dust of millions of years, he takes the professor’s chair in a college? We answer, different men want different kinds of colleees. The anvil was the best school-desk for Elihu Burritt, and quarry -stone for Hugh Miller. The former, among the cinders and horse -shoes, learned that patient toil which was the secret of his acquisition in the languages. The latter, from observations made while toiling with chisel and crowbar, laid the foundation of his wonderful attainments, one shelf of rock being worth to him more than the hundred shelves of a college-library.

Some men get into an occupation below that for which they are intended. They have their “seventy-four” in the mill-pond. They do not get along as well in that position as somebody with less brains. An elephant would make wretched work if you set it to hatch out gooseeggs, but no more wretched than a man of great attainments appointing himself to some insignificant office.

Men are often in a position a little above that for which they were intended. Now the old scow is out on the ocean. The weights of a clock said: “Come! come! This is dull work down here! I want to be the pendulum!” But the pendulum shouted upward: “I ‘m tired of this work! It does not seem that I make any progress going backward and forward! Oh! that I were the hands!” Under this excitement, the old clock, which had been going ever since the Revolutionary War, stopped stock-still. “What is the matter now, my old friend?” says the gray-haired patriarch. For very shame, not a word was said, until the old man set it a-going. Then the striking-bell spoke up and said: “Nothing! only the weights wanted to be the pendulum, and the pendulum wanted to be the hands!” “Well! well!” said o-randfather, *’ this is eeat work! “and the old man, losing his patience, gave the clock a gentle slap In the face, and told the pendulum hereafter to hold its tongue, and said to the weights: ‘’ You be hanged!”

But how may we know If we are in our right place — not an inch above, not an inch below?

If you can perform your work easily, without being cramped or exhausted, that is the right place. That man is in a horrible condition who is ever making prodigious effort to do more than he can do. It is just as easy for a star to swine in its orbit as for a mote to float in a sunbeam. Nature never sweats. The great law of gravitation holds the universe on its back as easily as a miller swings over his shoulder a bag of Genesee wheat. The winds never run themselves out of breath. The rivers do not weary in their course. The Mississippi and the Amazon are no more tired than the meadow -brook. Himalaya is not dizzy.

Poets talk about the waters of Niagara being in an agony, but I think they like it. How they frolic and clap their hands miles above, as they come skipping on toward the great somersault, singing: “Over we go! over we go!” When the universe goes at such tremendous speed, and the least impediment might break one of the great wheels, is it not a wonder that we do not hear a prodigious crack, or thunderous bang, loud enough to make the world’s knees knock together? Yet a million worlds In their flight do not make as much noise as a honey-bee coquetting among the clover-tops. Every thing in nature Is just as easy. Now, if the position you occupy require unnatural exertion, your only way out is either to take a step higher, or a step further down. Providence does not demand that you should break your back, or put your arm out of joint, or sprain your ankle. If you can only find out just what you are to do, you can do it perfectly easy.

Let the young be sure to begin right. Not once in a thousand times does a man successfully change occupations. The sea of life is so rough that you cannot cross over from one vessel to another except at great peril of falling between. Many have fallen down to nothing between the mason’s trowel and the carpenter’s saw; between the lawyer’s brief and the author’s pen; between the medicine-chest and the pulpit. It is no easy matter to switch off on another track this thundering express-train of life. A daffodil and a buttercup resolved to change places with each other, but in crossing

THE RIGHT TRACK.

over from stem to stem, they fell at the feet of a heart’s -ease. “Just as I expected!” said Heart’s -ease. “You might better have staid in your places!”