GO TO WORK, YOUNG MAN!
The present age seems to be very prolific in the production of numbers of young men who have somehow or other, educated themselves up to the belief that they were created to make their living by doing nothing. Every city, town, and village in the land is filled to overflowing with young men who are idle—hunting clerkships, or some place where they hope to obtain a living without work. Numbers are hanging around, living from hand to mouth, living upon some friend, waiting for a vacancy in some overcrowded store; and, when a vacancy occurs, offering to work for a salary that would cause a shrewd business man to suspect their honesty; and when remonstrated with by friends, and advised to go to work, they invariably answer, "I don't know what to do."
We would say to these who want to know what to do, go to work. There is work enough to do by which you can earn an honest living and gain the respect of all those whose respect is worth seeking. Quit loafing about, waiting and looking for a clerkship in a store with a wheelbarrow-load of goods. Get out into the country on a farm, and go to work. What to do? Why, in the Mississippi bottoms there are thousands of acres of virgin growth awaiting the stroke of the hardy axe-man, and thousands of acres of tillable-land that need only the work of the sturdy plowman to yield its treasures, richer far than the mines of the Black Hills; and yet you say you don't know what to do?
Go to work—go to the woods—go to the fields—and make an honest living; for we have in our mind's eye numbers of men whose talents are better suited to picking cotton, than measuring calico; to cutting cord wood than weighing sugar; to keeping up fencing, than books, and to hauling rails, than dashing out whiskey by the drink; and we can assure you that the occupations you are better adapted for are much more honorable in the eyes of persons whose respect is worth having.
A little girl asked her father one day to taste a most delicious apple. What remained was ruefully inspected a moment, when she asked: "Do you know, papa, how I can tell you are big without looking at you?"—"I cannot say," was the reply. "I can tell by the bite you took out of my apple," was the crushing reply.