John Wesley's father. "Because," replied his mother, "if I had told him but nineteen times, all my labor would have been lost, while now he will understand and remember."

Young Linnæus was called by his teachers almost a blockhead. Not finding him fit for the church, his parents sent him to college to study medicine. But the silent teacher within, greater and wiser than all others, led him to the fields; and neither sickness, misfortune, nor poverty could drive him from the study of botany, the choice of his heart, and he became the greatest botanist of his age.

Samuel Drew was one of the dullest and most listless boys in his neighborhood, yet after an accident by which he nearly lost his life, and after the death of his brother. he became so studious and industrious that he could no bear to lose a moment. He read at every meal, using all the time he could get for self-improvement. He said that Paine's "Age of Reason" made him an author, for it was by his attempt to refute its arguments that he was first known as a strong, vigorous writer.

We live in a superficial age, and we hurry along in a happy-go-lucky way, ignorant or heedless of the capacities of our minds and bodies. The precocious youth, the boy or girl of average intelligence, or the dunce, should alike study his own strength, his weakness, his likes, his dislikes, his bent. "Know thyself," was spoken of old at Delphi; and, though the oracle has long been mute, the words are of eternal significance. No better advice was ever given to man. Philosophy finds its highest province in the study of our own na tures. Knowledge thus gained, and that alone, will teach the round boy to avoid the square holes as he would shun falsehood and dishonor. It has been well said that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.

CHAPTER VI.

WHAT CAREER?

Brutes find out where their talents He;
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.

And he who waits to have his task marked out,
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled.

LOWELL.

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.

In the measure in which thou seekest to do thy duty shalt thou know what is in thee. But what is thy duty? The demand of the hour.GOETHE.

Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,

And so make life, death, and the vast forever, one grand, sweet song. CHARLES KINGSLEY.

"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 was n'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 did n'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, be gun 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 sav、 ajis. 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 is n't my Fort.'

"Moral: Never don't do nothin which is n't your Fort, for ef you do you'll find yourself splashin round in the kanawl, figgeratively 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 profes sorship 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 no tice:

"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 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 misfor tune 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 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.

"The ignorance of men who know not for what time and to what thing they be fit," said Roger Ascham, causeth some to wish themselves rich for whom it were

better a great deal to be poor; some to desire to be in the court, which be born and be fitter rather for the cart; some to be masters and rule others, who never yet began to rule themselves; some to teach, which rather should learn; some to be priests, which were fitter to be clerks."

Half the world seems to have found uncongenial occupation, as if the human race had been shaken up together and exchanged places in the operation. A ser vant girl is trying to teach, and a natural teacher is tend ing 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. Be hind 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 es tate; and he that hath a calling hath a place of profit