and attempt to make a watchmaker of him, the boy might, after an
apprenticeship of five or seven years, be able to take apart and put
together a watch; but all through life he would be working up hill and
seizing every excuse for leaving his work and idling away his time.
Watchmaking is repulsive to him.

Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and
best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to
believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation. Yet
we see many who have mistaken their calling, from the blacksmith up (or
down) to the clergyman. You will see, for instance, that extraordinary
linguist the "learned blacksmith," who ought to have been a teacher of
languages; and you may have seen lawyers, doctors and clergymen who were
better fitted by nature for the anvil or the lapstone.

SELECT THE RIGHT LOCATION

After securing the right vocation, you must be careful to select the
proper location. You may have been cut out for a hotel keeper, and they
say it requires a genius to "know how to keep a hotel." You might
conduct a hotel like clock-work, and provide satisfactorily for five
hundred guests every day; yet, if you should locate your house in a
small village where there is no railroad communication or public travel,
the location would be your ruin. It is equally important that you do not
commence business where there are already enough to meet all demands in
the same occupation. I remember a case which illustrates this subject.
When I was in London in 1858, I was passing down Holborn with an English
friend and came to the "penny shows." They had immense cartoons outside,
portraying the wonderful curiosities to be seen "all for a penny." Being
a little in the "show line" myself, I said "let us go in here." We soon