THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VI. 41 < 



the inclination or aptness should be given full opportunity for develop- 

 ment. Here is something approaching a rule in choosing an occupation: 

 Other things being equal a young man will often do well to follow his 

 father's business. But there are too many exceptions to call it a rule. 

 However, if the father's trade or occupation has brought competence and 

 honor to the family I would advise his son to look carefully to that busi- 

 ness before choosing another. Part of his father's business the boy does 

 not have to learn. He absorbs knowledge of it without effort: and then 

 he will have -or his guide and instructor the man of all men in the world 

 most interested in his success. I am sure young women, in ninety-nine 

 cases out of a hundred, would better follow their mother's occupation. 



Fortunately we are each of us wonderfully adapted to do almost any 

 kind of useful work. We say a man bas missed his calling because he 

 has failed in business, but we do not know that he would have succeeded 

 in another. If one succeeds in a particular calling he probably would 

 have succeeded equally well in another. Whatever work is next to us. 

 or, in other words, the work which we are "up against" and which most 

 needs doing, we will generally find ourselves well suited to do. The 

 world could not get on well and keep its work done up if that were not 

 true. One stands the best chance of gaining success, honor and profit 

 by taking up bravely whatever work or business is nearest to him and 

 which most needs to be done. I well remember when the war of the 

 rebellion came on we had no professional soldiers — none to speak of 

 — but hundreds of thousands of soldiers were needed to save the nation. 

 In just a little while farmers and lawyers and mechanics and every other 

 kind became soldiers and no better were ever seen. I do not remember 

 so well about it, because it happened several thousand years ago, but it is 

 written that Nehemiah obtained permission of King Artxerxes to go and 

 superintend the rebuilding or Jerusalem, whose walls were in ruins and 

 her gates consumed with fire, and the remnant of the Jews that had 

 escaped, that were left from captivity, were in a sorry plight. Nehemiah 

 was no mechanic nor architect; he had been born rich and great, was 

 cup bearer to the king, but he was resolved that the city and the walls 

 of the city of his fathers should be rebuilt. So he went over to Jeru- 

 salem and gathered the remnants of his people together. They were 

 mostly husbandmen who had escaped from captivity because they 

 were not so easily rounded up as those in the city. Probably there were 

 not among them a dozen bricklayers nor any soldiers; but they rebuilt 

 those walls in an incredibly short time and defended themselves the 

 while against fierce and cunning enemies. Nehemiah in his report of it 

 says: "The people had a mind to work." Work that needs to be done 

 is the kind a man can do "with a mind," if he is right minded, and what 

 he does with a mind he does well. What was very peculiar and yet quite 

 natural and sensible about the work of rebuilding those walls was that 

 every fellow pitched into the breach right opposite his own house 

 not wasting time hunting for a place that might suit him better to work 

 in. Tobiah, a scornful Amorite, saw the walls rising rapidly and he said 

 they were no good; "even that which they build if a fox go up it he will 



