Matthew Arnold said:  “Better be a Napoleon of book-blacks, or an Alexander of chimney-sweeps, than an attorney, who, like necessity, knows no law.”  There are born shoemakers cobbling in Congress, while statesmen are pegging away on a shoe-last because their brains have not been capitalized by education and opportunity.  There are born preachers at work in machine shops, and born mechanics rattling around in pulpits like a mustard seed in an empty gourd; born surgeons are carving beef in butcher stalls, while here and there butchers are operating for appendicitis.

God planted the hardy pine on the hills of New England, and the magnolia down in the sunny South-land.  Let some horticulturist compel the magnolia to climb the cold hills of New England, and the northern tree to come down and take its place in the “land of cotton, cinnamon seed and sandy bottom,” and everything in both will protest against the mistake.

Lowell said:  “Every baby boy is born with a calling.”  With some this calling is very definite.  It was definite with George Stevenson when in childhood he made engines of mud with sticks for smoke-stacks.  It was definite with Thomas A. Edison, who, instead of selling newspapers, went to experimenting with acids, and charged a steel stirrup that lifted him into the electric saddle of the world.  With others it is very indefinite.  Patrick Henry failed at everything he undertook until he began talking, when he soon became the golden mouthed orator of his age.  Peter Cooper failed until he took to making glue, then his business “stuck” to everybody and he made a fortune out of which he built Cooper Union for the education of poor boys.

I have a grandson whose calling was indefinite.  He was named for his grandfather, to whom fishing is a fad.  During my rest season I go fishing almost every day.  While I make an exception of Sunday I can appreciate the minister who was a great fisherman.  On his way to an appointment Sunday morning he came upon a lad fishing in a wayside stream.  Halting he said:  “My boy, this is the Sabbath day and the good Book says you should remember to keep it holy.”  Just then a fish seized the boy’s bait and drew the float under, when the good minister excitedly said:  “Pull, pull.  Ah! that’s a good one.  I’ll try that place myself some other day.”

Fishing is my favorite sport.  My grandson was a baseball fiend and a football player.  He was hurt in a football game and I wrote him, warning him against his recklessness, and to the admonition I added:  “Twenty-five boys have been killed already this season playing football; it’s a brutal game anyway.”

He replied:  “Dear Grandfather, I am sorry so many boys have been killed playing football, but I read recently that last summer two hundred and fifty men were drowned while out fishing; would it not be well for you to keep off Lake Ellerslie?  You say football is a brutal game; I submit to you, Grandpa, that the man who takes an innocent worm or a minnow, strings it on a steel hook, and sinking it into the water, jerks the gills out of an innocent fish, is more cruel than the boy who kicks another around for exercise.  I need a pair of baseball shoes, number six and a half; send them by express.”  He got the shoes, and I decided he was called to be a lawyer.