CHAPTER X
WHAT CAREER?
Brutes find out where their talents lie;
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.
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.
"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 wasn'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 didn'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, begun 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 savajis. 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 isn't my Fort.'
"Moral: Never don't do nothin' which isn't your Fort, for ef you do you'll find yourself splashin' round in the kanawl, figuratively speakin."