Harper's Young People, April 12, 1881 / An Illustrated Weekly

BABES IN THE WOOD—A TABLEAU.

What business shall I follow? is the question every young man and boy asks himself; how shall I make a living? and the best answer is, By learning some useful trade. Nearly all the good men who have succeeded in life have begun in this way. Benjamin Franklin went to Philadelphia from Boston. He was a printer by trade, very skillful and industrious. But when he reached Philadelphia, tired, feverish, and weak, he had only a few pence to spend. He bought three pennies' worth of rolls at a baker's, and as he could not eat them all, carried a part under his arm. As he passed a house in Market Street he saw a young lady on the stoop, who was afterward his wife. He soon found employment at a printer's, and attracted the notice of the neighbors by working late at night when others were asleep. That young man, they said, is sure to succeed. He drew business from his rivals, and made money. He studied, and became a fine writer; he never ceased to work. He drew the lightning from the skies with a kite, and he aided in forming our republic. He lived to a great age, in good health, useful to his fellow-men, prosperous, and happy, because he had learned a trade.
George Washington was poor in his youth. He went to a country school, and then learned to be a surveyor. As a boy he was always ready to work, and passed his youth in the wild woods of Virginia measuring land. When he became a man he defended his country and made it free. He was always fond of farming, and passed his later years in that pursuit. The habits of labor and accuracy he had formed in his youth made him what he was. Had he never learned to be a surveyor, he would probably never have been of use to his fellow-men.
Another of these useful Americans was Robert Fulton. Almost every one travels on steamboats or crosses the ferries; but how few remember who it was that first made the steamboat a common thing. Robert Fulton was its real inventor. He became a mechanic when he was a boy, and was never tired of visiting workshops. Afterward he learned to draw and paint, but all his life he was still a mechanic, inventing useful machines. He improved canals, and made boats that moved under water. At last, in 1807, he built the first steamboat that was successful. One night the people on the banks of the Hudson were startled by the sudden appearance of a fiery monster, whose panting breath sounded along the shore. It seemed to breathe out great clouds of fire and smoke. It shook the smooth surface of the water, and sailed against wind and tide. It was evidently a demon. The sailors on board the sloops of Esopus fled from it as it came along: nothing like it had ever been seen before. But it was only the Clermont , Fulton's first steamboat, that had begun its trips between Albany and New York. The first voyage was made in about a day and a half; the sloops sometimes spent a week or two in getting to Hudson.