“I do not say this to discourage you from being a merchant,” resumed his uncle. “I would discourage no boy from entering any honest calling, if he chooses it, and appears to be fitted to it. I don’t know but that you have special qualifications for the mercantile profession. If you have, I would advise you to make that your business. Otherwise, you had better remain where you are. At all events, you ought to look at your favorite profession on all sides, dark as well as bright, before you tie yourself down in it for life. To sum up, as we legal gentlemen say—but we ought to have the decision reported; have you got a scrap of paper, Willie?”
“Yes, sir,—here’s a piece.”
“Well, you shall be clerk of the court, and write down the decision. Take your pencil, and write as I dictate, commencing each sentence upon a new line.”
Whistler followed his father’s directions, and the result was the following memoranda:
“All men ought to follow some useful employment.
“Every man ought to choose that employment in which he can be most useful and successful.
“Agriculture is the primitive and natural employment of man.
“It is an employment which combines the greatest number of advantages with the fewest evils and temptations, and is therefore best fitted to secure the happiness and good of mankind.
“It is an employment which must ever demand the hands of the great bulk of the race.
“But the state of human society, and the interests of the race, render many other professions necessary.