Wit, humor, reason, rhetoric, prose, poetry and story woven into eight popular lectures

by George W. Bain

Now I come to the more practical, for I do not bring you this talk, challenging your criticism or inviting your praise of it as a literary production, but with the purpose of helping some one live as I would wish to live if I had my life to live over.

First, to the boys before me. If I had life to live over one of my first purposes would be to seek my calling in life. Do you know half the failures of life come from misfits of occupation? There are lawyers starving for want of clients, doctors with patients under monuments, and preachers talking to empty pews, who might have been successful in factories or furrows. Cowper was a failure as a lawyer, he was a success as a poet; Goldsmith was a bungling surgeon, he was a power with his pen; Horace Greely was a success in the Tribune office, he was a failure as a farmer and a slow candidate for president.

When U.S. Grant was a very young man his father sent him to sell a horse to a buyer and instructed him to ask one hundred dollars, but if he could not get that amount to take eighty-five. The buyer looked the horse over and said: "Young man, what is your price?" Young Grant replied: "Father told me to ask you one hundred dollars, but if you would not give that to take eighty-five." It is needless to say the calling of U.S. Grant was not horse trading. This same young man afterwards tried the grocery business and bought potatoes far and wide to corner the market, but the price went down, the potatoes rotted in Grant's bins and his grocery effort was on a par with his horse trading. He then tried the ice market but that became watered stock on his hands and again he was a failure. Later on in life 'mid roar of cannon and rattle of musketry the misfit found his element. Here he was so sure of his calling he made his motto, "I'll fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," and to the general, who could not drive a horse trade, or corner the potato market, or deal in ice, one of the greatest generals the world ever knew surrendered his sword, and from the highest military position Grant was called to be President of the United States.

If it is true that "ever since creation shot its first shuttle through chaos design has marked the course of every golden thread," then every human being is designed to fill a certain place in life. There are young women teaching school, getting to be old maids, who should be the wives of good husbands, and there are some wives who ought to be old maid "schoolmarms."

We have born architects, born orators, born bookkeepers, born musicians, born poets, born preachers, born teachers, born surgeons, born bankers, born blacksmiths, born merchants, born farmers.

Two farmers live side by side; one doesn't seem to work hard, yet everything is neatness from one end of the farm to the other; his neighbor works hard, yet the cattle are in his corn, the fences are broken, gates off the hinges and everything seems out of order. That man was not made to be a farmer. He should rent out, or sell out, and go to the legislature, or find some other place he can fill.

Matthew Arnold said: "Better be a Napoleon of book-blacks, or an Alexander of chimney-sweeps, than an attorney, who, like necessity, knows no law." There are born shoemakers cobbling in Congress, while statesmen are pegging away on a shoe-last because their brains have not been capitalized by education and opportunity. There are born preachers at work in machine shops, and born mechanics rattling around in pulpits like a mustard seed in an empty gourd; born surgeons are carving beef in butcher stalls, while here and there butchers are operating for appendicitis.

God planted the hardy pine on the hills of New England, and the magnolia down in the sunny South-land. Let some horticulturist compel the magnolia to climb the cold hills of New England, and the northern tree to come down and take its place in the "land of cotton, cinnamon seed and sandy bottom," and everything in both will protest against the mistake.

Lowell said: "Every baby boy is born with a calling." With some this calling is very definite. It was definite with George Stevenson when in childhood he made engines of mud with sticks for smoke-stacks. It was definite with Thomas A. Edison, who, instead of selling newspapers, went to experimenting with acids, and charged a steel stirrup that lifted him into the electric saddle of the world. With others it is very indefinite. Patrick Henry failed at everything he undertook until he began talking, when he soon became the golden mouthed orator of his age. Peter Cooper failed until he took to making glue, then his business "stuck" to everybody and he made a fortune out of which he built Cooper Union for the education of poor boys.

I have a grandson whose calling was indefinite. He was named for his grandfather, to whom fishing is a fad. During my rest season I go fishing almost every day. While I make an exception of Sunday I can appreciate the minister who was a great fisherman. On his way to an appointment Sunday morning he came upon a lad fishing in a wayside stream. Halting he said: "My boy, this is the Sabbath day and the good Book says you should remember to keep it holy." Just then a fish seized the boy's bait and drew the float under, when the good minister excitedly said: "Pull, pull. Ah! that's a good one. I'll try that place myself some other day."