A youth may handle a
yard-stick, or measure a piece of ribbon; and there will be no
discredit in doing so, unless he allows his mind to have no higher
range than the stick and ribbon; to be as short as the one, and as
narrow as the other. "Let not those blush who HAVE," said Fuller,
"but those who HAVE NOT a lawful calling." And Bishop Hall said,
"Sweet is the destiny of all trades, whether of the brow or of the
mind." Men who have raised themselves from a humble calling, need
not be ashamed, but rather ought to be proud of the difficulties
they have surmounted. An American President, when asked what was
his coat-of-arms, remembering that he had been a hewer of wood in
his youth, replied, "A pair of shirt sleeves." A French doctor
once taunted Flechier, Bishop of Nismes, who had been a tallow-
chandler in his youth, with the meanness of his origin, to which
Flechier replied, "If you had been born in the same condition that
I was, you would still have been but a maker of candles."
Nothing is more common than energy in money-making, quite
independent of any higher object than its accumulation. A man who
devotes himself to this pursuit, body and soul, can scarcely fail
to become rich. Very little brains will do; spend less than you
earn; add guinea to guinea; scrape and save; and the pile of gold
will gradually rise.
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