We of the press get scores of letters from young men, who spread out therein what they imagine to be their qualifications and accomplishments,—and plenty of them, for self-satisfaction is really the first law of Nature. Then follow their hopes and wishes and askings for advice, which, stripped of the flimsy rhetorical wrappers they feel obliged to use in deference to the old prejudice in favor of steady industry, come simply to this: "What is the minimum of work on which a clever creature like myself can live? And what kind of work is the least irksome and the most respectable?"
My colleague Tarbox, justly celebrated as a local reporter, belongs to the earnest school, and wishes me to take high ground, and write a sermon on the holiness and dignity of labor. He is always ready with his laborare est orare, and has by heart a passage from a German professor, who, writing of the manners of the Romans in an epoch of their history not unlike this of ours, says: "When a man works merely in order to attain as quickly as possible to enjoyment, it is a mere accident that he does not become a criminal."
But I tell Tarbox that these foreigners never understand the working of our institutions, nor the genius of our people. As to the dignity of labor, I have written a good deal on that text, particularly just before elections. The phrase sounds well in leading articles and on the stump, and may carry some comfort to a hard-working man. But I doubt if he believes it in his heart. I certainly do not. It is not true. There is no dignity in labor. Honesty, wisdom, manliness, there may be in labor, but not dignity. Dignity is in repose; the proverb is as old as Julius Cæsar. I might perhaps serve out some cut-and-dried bits of morality that have been prescribed as specifics for such complaints since the days of the Seven Wise Men. We keep them "set up" and ready for use. The only fault of these excellent old remedies is, that they never cure chronic cases of inefficiency, whether it be constitutional or contracted. They are good for nothing unless as a mild tonic for people who could do well enough without them. Now the cases we have to deal with are generally constitutional. When a young man writes to a stranger to ask upon what career in life he shall enter, he sends a diagnosis of his character in his letter. You know at once to what subdivision of the species he belongs. The hunting British squire recognizes only three orders of animals,—game, vermin, and stock. The human race may be divided in the same way. Game men take care of themselves; the vermin make others take care of them; and the stock, useful, harmless, and insignificant, except as an aggregate, furnish the first class with tools and the second with victims, and hitherto have done most of the drudgery of the world. Our correspondents belong to a sluggish but ambitious variety of the stock, that is seeking for some respectable or semi-respectable method of avoiding the primeval labor curse. Their own ingenuity failing them, they apply for the use of ours. The robust men, who have "the wrestling thews that throw the world," know how to get what they want, and ask no one to teach them. Indeed, to ask advice at any time is an indication of weakness. We feel kindly to those who consult us. It is a compliment that we were chosen, and not another; but I do not think that we respect them the more for it.
It is evident that the heroic remedies recommended by my colleague are likely to do harm rather than good to young persons who have outgrown their moral strength. It would be more humane to prescribe a treatment which, though it cannot cure, may alleviate their most distressing symptoms, and enable them to bear the burden of life without too much suffering. I shall, therefore, exhibit some of the methods by which young fellows of tolerable education and address may get along without undue exertion,—Disce puer fortunam ex me, verumque laborem ex aliis. For a youngster of good nerves and hopeful temperament there is nothing better than speculation,—as gambling without pasteboard and ivory is called. Up to-day and down to-morrow is as pleasant and exciting to men of that mould as seesaws and swings to children with strong stomachs. But let those made of feebler stuff beware. Between the two millstones of winning and losing they will be ground into despair, or into shameless roguery. "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat."
There is no simpler way of "achieving honorable maintenance" than to marry an heiress. But to seek fortune in matrimony is almost like looking for it in a lottery. By some mysterious law of Providence, rich people draw the high prizes. Money is apt to fall in love with money. The female dollar prefers the attentions of her own kind. Cupid, "once a god," as Tennyson writes, "is now a lawyer's clerk," with sharp eyes wide open; and suits in forma pauperis are as little likely to succeed in courts of love as in courts of law.
Politics being a subject everybody understands by instinct, young men will naturally turn their attention that way. The number of offices with salaries make this country almost that Frenchman's Utopia imagined by Madame de Staël, where every adult male was to be a public officer paid by the state. We have even more than this. When all other hopes break down, there is the custom-house,—that last infirmary of noble minds who have failed in every attempt to cure the aches that empty pockets are heirs to. No doubt the profession of politics is generally remunerative; but where I live, a foreign order of nature's nobility rules us. We Saxons have fought our battle of Hastings at the polls, and have lost it; and no one can hope to hold office here, unless he came over with Murphy the Conqueror. Even should he combine in his person that profitable conjunction of knavery, impudence, and laziness which we call a politician, with the physical requisites described by a philosopher of the last century,—Vox stentoria, sempiterna, cum cerebello vacuo,—it would profit him nothing.
The poet Gray makes Jemmy Twitcher marry Divinity, after being refused by Law and Physic. These two smile only upon serious admirers. They who follow the law—at a distance, as some one remarks, never pick up a living. And in medicine, unless the indolent practitioner can invent a pill or a syrup, and can borrow enough to publish lying certificates from country clergymen, and to hire bill-stickers to dirty the face of Nature with the names of his specifics and the wonders they work, he will never earn his daily bread. But Divinity is more easily pleased. It was usual in the generation now passing away to recommend the Church to young gentlemen of moderate energy without capital. And indeed the path seemed easy, and the prospect pleasant.
A year or two in a seminary, a white cravat, a "call" made audible by a salary, Paley's advice in the matter of sermons,—to make one and to steal three,—all the young women of the parish sitting at his feet, working worsted slippers for them, and swinging their intoxicating little censers of flattery under his nose,—such was the imaginary programme of his career. Certainly a tolerable existence while it lasted. But it seldom did last. The "young probationer and candidate for heaven" married. He selected—destiny always seemed to impel him to it—a "sweet woman," who overstocked his parsonage, and, like the magician's apprentice in the ballad, could not rule the young spirits she had evoked. The salary did not increase with the family, and sweet women are never good housekeepers. The congregation began to criticise the old sermons; a jury of stern matrons, who spoke what minds they had, sat in perpetual session on his doctrines, his wife's dress, and his children's behavior;—and the end of that man was dreary, if he was only a drone in the hive of the Lord. In our day The Church is militant, and needs her ministers in the field. Those who are not able to fight will be sent to garrison some remote post, where there is no danger and little pay.
Art offers many more inducements to our young friends. If they have a knack for sketching and a "feeling for color," as the slang goes, they need not waste much time in preparatory study. Let them devote themselves to landscape. It is easy to draw a tree that will not shock the eye of an ordinary observer. Little outlay is needed to hire a room; none whatever to call it a studio. This magical word furnishes it at once, and covers every deficiency in chairs, tables, and carpet. Studio, Artist,—excellent, well-sounding names! In them is often the secret of the whole business.
An artist has this advantage over other men,—he may indulge in whatever amusements his means can afford him, and no one will find fault. Every class has its own standard of manners and conduct. The measure and rule for artists have come over the sea, condensed from French feuilletons and Vies de Bohéme. They are supposed to belong, by right of profession, to a reckless, witty, singing, and carousing guild. It is almost needless to say that the real life of the hard-working men who have earned fame by the brush is as unlike all this as possible. But these vague, ultramarine notions of fun and revelry have taken possession of the American mind, just opening to art, and established the standard for artists here. It exists in fact only in the imagination; for, excepting a few ebullitions in the way of hair, beards, and black sombreros, our artists are as saturnine as the rest of us, and not as good company around the mahogany as a judicious combination of clergymen and lawyers. Nevertheless, so powerful is the conventional, when it has once taken root in the imagination, that some of our younger artists believe themselves to be wild, rollicking fellows, who despise the humdrum existence of the rest of us, although they are sober and economical, pay their bills weekly, and talk their morning paper like other people. Young correspondents! you will perceive what a chance is here for you. If a kind public, in its youthful enthusiasm for art, invests these steady-going citizens with such delightful romantic qualities, it will of course wink at any irregularities of conduct on your part, as in strict keeping with the character.