them, he said, "Time enough for the Academy, my little man! Go home, mind your schooling, try to make a better drawing of the Apollo,—and in a month come again and let me see it." The boy went home, sketched and worked with redoubled diligence, —and, at the end of the month, called again on the sculptor. The drawing was better, but again Banks sent him back, with good advice, to work and study. In a week the boy was again at his door with drawing much improved. Banks now bade him be of good cheer, for if he continued to improve thus, he would be sure to distinguish himself; which prophecy was afterward amply fulfilled.

Faraday, the noted scientist, made his first electrical machine out of a bottle, while Lord Bacon, at the age of sixteen, had successfully pointed out the errors of Aristotle's philosophy. So, John Smeaton, the builder of the Eddystone lighthouse, on the English coast, when in petticoats was discovered on the top of his father's barn fixing up the model of a windmill which he had constructed. M. Carnot, who, during the Napoleonic wars, could direct the movements of fourteen armies at one and the same time, went to a theater when a boy, and seeing some poor military tactics on the stage, instinctively cried out his disapprobation at the players.

Sometimes little circumstances wake up the right idea in a boy or man. Thus George Law, the steamboat king and millionaire, found in an old stray volume the story of a farmer's son who went away to seek his fortune, and came home rich; whereupon George himself set out and beat the achievements of the boy in the story all out of sight. It is said of the

great philanthropist, Thomas Clarkson, that when he was a competitor for the prize essay at Cambridge, he had never thought upon the subject to be handled, which was, "May one man lawfully enslave another?" Chancing one day to pick up in a friend's house a newspaper, advertising a History of Guinea, he hastened to London, bought the work, and there found a picture of cruelties that filled his soul with. horror. "Coming one day in sight of Wade's mill in Hertfordshire," he says, "I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the roadside, and held my horse. Here a thought came into my mind, that, if the contents of this essay were true, it was time that some person should see those calamities to their end."

Sometimes a youth is put at one calling and fails, and then tries another and succeeds. But this must always be done in early life. To change vocations after many years have gone by, is more or less dangerous, as has been shown. It is said that the father of John Adams. the second President of the United States, tried to make a shoemaker of his son, and accordingly gave him, one day, some uppers to cut out by a pattern that had a three-cornered hole in it, by which it had hung upon a nail. John went to work, and followed the pattern exactly, three-cornered hole and all! In Macmillan's Magazine there is an incident of a similar nature. A young man, whose bluntness was such that every effort to turn him to account in a linen drapery establishment was found unavailing, received from his employer the customary note that he would not suit, and must go. But I'm good for something," said the poor fellow, unwilling to be

turned out into the street.

.6

You are good for

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nothing as a salesman," said the principal, regarding "I am sure I can him from his selfish point of view. be useful," repeated the young man. "How? tell me how." "I don't know, sir; I don't know." "Nor do I." And the principal laughed as he saw the eagerness the lad displayed. "Only don't put me away, sir; don't put me away. Try me at something besides selling. I cannot sell; I know I cannot sell." "I know that, too; that is what is wrong." 'But I can make myself useful somehow; I know I can." The blunt boy, who could not be turned into a salesman, and whose manner was so little captivating that he was nearly sent about his business, was accordingly tried at something else. He was placed in the counting-house, where his aptitude for figures soon showed itself, and in a few years he became, not only chief cashier in the concern, but eminent as an accountant throughout the country.

CHANGING VOCATIONS

The only remaining point in this connection to be considered is this: After choosing a vocation in life deliberately and thoughtfully. it will be better, as a general rule, to stick to it than to change. Each man will have to determine for himself whether his case furnishes an exception to the rule. If it does, then it will be best to change; but he ought to be sure he is right before he goes ahead. A late writer on this point has forcibly said: "In hours of despondency, or when smarting under some disappointment, a young man is apt to fancy that in some other calling he would have been more successful. It is so easy, while re

garding it at a distance, to look at its bright side only, shutting the eyes at what is ugly and disagreeable; it is so easy to dream of the resolution and tenacity of purpose with which he would follow it, and to mount up in imagination to its most dazzling honors, and clutch them in defiance of every rival, that it is not strange that men abandon their professions for others for which they are less fitted. But when we reflect that the man remains the same, whatever his callingthat a mere change of his position can make no radical change of his mind, either by adding to its strength or diminishing its weakness-we shall conclude that in many cases what he is in one calling, that he would be, substantially, in any other, and that he will gain nothing by the exchange."

OCCUPATION,

It makes little difference what vocation a man follows, if honorable and legitimate, so far as his success is concerned, if he really likes it and finds himself adapted to it. All callings are alike honorable, if pursued with an honorable spirit; it is the heart only which degrades—the intention carried into the work, and not the work itself. The most despised calling may be made honorable by the honor of its professors; a blacksmith may be a man of polished manners, and a millionaire a clown; a shoemaker may put genius and taste into his work, while a lawyer may only cobble. Better be a first-class bootblack than a miserable, starving lawyer or doctor. The day has long gone by when a man need to hang down his head because of the humbleness of his vocation, if it is useful.

LOCATION.

"God made the country, and man made the town.
What wonder, then, that health and virtue, gifts
That can alone make sweet the bitter draught
That life holds out to all, should most abound
And least be threatened, in the fields and groves?"
-COWPER.

HERE is, on the part of young people in the country, an eager, restless desire to get away from farm life, and go to a city. They dislike the drudgery, the steady hard work of the farm, and think it would be much better and nicer if they could stand behind a counter in some dry-goods store, or work in an office. They would then be "among folks," they think, and would be able to see for themselves "what is going on." The glare and glitter, the noise and bustle, the activity and commotion, the apparent splendor and gayety of a city life, they think, would just suit them, and would be so different from the solitude and lonesomeness of the farm and the farm home.

Said Dr. J. G. Holland: "We see young men pushing everywhere into trade, into mechanical pursuits, into the learned professions, into insignificant clerkships; into salaried positions of every sort that will