“Yes, sir,” replied Clinton.
“But he didn’t act green at all, father,” added Whistler.
“My feet got real sore, though,” said Clinton, whose modesty led him to turn the subject. “I told Willie I’d rather hoe corn all day than walk about the roads here,—I mean the streets.”
“Well, I’m about used up, too,” said his uncle. “I’ve been cudgelling my brains all day over a very intricate insurance case, and I believe I don’t understand it now quite so well as I did when I began. Why, Clinton, hoeing corn is real fun compared with much of the work that we city folks have to do. If you were to live here, and earn your living, you would have to put up with worse things than sore feet. Many country people seem to think that we have nothing to do but to sit in our armchairs, and read the papers, and discuss the news, and take money; but if they could exchange work with us a little while, they would be more contented with their lot forever after. They work hard and get tired, I know; but we not only get tired, but sick, too, and worry and fret ourselves into our graves, while they are in the prime of life. They work out in the pure air, while we are stived up in little hot rooms, breathing everything but the odors of heaven. After all, the country’s the place to enjoy life. Don’t you think so, Whistler?”
“Yes, sir, the country’s the place for me,” replied Whistler. “When I’m a man I mean to have a great farm, and have it stocked with the best horses, and cows, and sheep, and pigs, and poultry. And you’ll come and live with me, too; won’t you, father?”
“Yes, I think I will, if you lump me in with the pigs, and poultry, and other live stock,” said his father, with an assumed air of offended dignity.
“No, father, I didn’t lump you with the stock; I put a period after them, and began a new sentence with you,” replied Whistler.
“I think it must have been a very brief period; however, I’ll take your word for it,” added his father. “But, speaking of the country, I suspect you will find playing and working on a farm two very different things. At any rate, I shall advise you not to invest your funds very deeply in agricultural improvements, until you have worked on a farm a year or two as a hand.”
“But I thought you just said farming was the best employment for a man,” observed Whistler, in some perplexity.
“I did say what was equivalent to that,” resumed his father; “but all men are not fit for farmers. Some are too lazy; some are too genteel; some don’t know enough; some know too much, in their own estimation, and so get their living by their wits; some are too uneasy to stay long enough in one spot to raise a crop of six-weeks beans; some haven’t the bodily strength to work on a farm; and some are too tricky to follow any honest calling. Then there are others who were born to be sailors, or mechanics, or students, or political leaders, or merchants, or doctors, or clergymen, or lawyers. They have special talents for these or other professions, and, of course, they can’t be farmers. You might as well try to drown a man who was born to be hung, as try to make a farmer of a man that was born to ‘plough the sea.’ But the great body of men do not have these particular talents. They are about as well fitted for one common employment as for another, and so they decide on the one that they consider the most easy, profitable, and genteel; and it is just here that they oftentimes make their great mistake. Are you going to sleep over my lecture, Clinton?” he abruptly added, on observing that his nephew had partially closed his eyes.