leave the parental roof, and commence the battle of life for themselves, look 

 out in the busy world around them to see what business they can engage in 

 that will afford a certain and liberal pecuniary return, a residence in an intelli- 

 gent and refined community, which confers all the blessings of social, moral, 

 intellectual and religious advancement, and which will yet allow them ample 

 leisure for the improvement of the mind, and the cultivation of those tastes and 

 refinements, which are the glory of a truly civilized people. Thousands of 

 men who have given up the harrassing cares and anxieties of business life, and 

 have retired with a suflicient competence to insure a comfortable support in 

 their declining years, yet wish to engage in something which will relieve the 

 monotony and tedium of mere existence, and which will give to the mind that 

 freshness and exhilaration, and to the body that exercise which are indispensa- 

 ble to the fullest enjoyment of life. 



There are thousands of men who have been the sport of misfortune, who are 

 broken down bankrupts and crushed to the earth by defeat and discourage- 

 ment, who have not the heart or means to enter again into the fiuctuating ex- 

 periences of mercantile life, yet who are compelled to do something to satisfy 

 the necessities of themselves and those dependent on them. 



There are also thousands of clerks and book-keepers who have spent the 

 best part of their lives in the harness of servitude; who have but a few hun- 

 dred dollars to show for their years of toil ; whose pale faces, stooping forms, 

 and debilitated health daily admonish them that they must change their man- 

 ner of life, or Nature will visit them with a terrible retribution. At the same 

 time the spirit of their manhood is longing for a life — independent, free and un- 

 fettered — by which they can sit under their " own vine and fig-tree," and be 

 amenable to no employer but themselves. 



There are also thousands of farmers and artizans, once sturdy and full of 

 vigor and endurance, but whose rheumatic pains and over-worked, broken- 

 down frames render them unfit for the exhaustive and incessant toil of the 

 farm, the shop or the factory ; whose habits of industry will not tolerate their 

 idleness ; but who long for some light, remunerative labor, which would re- 

 cuperate their enfeebled constitutions and deal lightly with the growing infirm- 

 ities of years. 



There are also tens of thousands of active, enterprising, vigorous, live men — 

 with fertile brains, ready hands, native ingenuity, and indomitable energy— 

 who are anxious to engage in some business which opens an illimitable field 

 for all these qualifications, and with genuine pioneer spirit seek a new country 

 and new associations, in which to build magnifioent fortunes and A,ise them- 

 selves to positions cjf influence, dignity and trust. ^ 



To all these we offer a few suggestions, which, perhaps, may assist them 

 in finding a satisfactory answer to the momentous inquiry, "What shall we do ?" 

 It is needless to say that many of the avocations of life are so crowded by 

 earnest competitors, that to engage in them is not only undesirable, but the 

 risk of failure makes it positively dangerous to do so. The professions are 

 thronged by hosts of needy aspirants, who sour their tempers and embitter 

 their lives by their struggles for success, and their almost unavailing efforts to 

 eke out a scanty and precarious existence by all the strategy which want and 

 absolute necessity can master. 



The road to commercial success is covered with the unnumbered failures of 

 the vast majority ; while only a few exceptions who survive the perilous or- 

 deal, ever reach the coveted reward of a sure and permanent prosperity. In 

 the staid city of Boston, statistics inform us that ninety-five out of every hun- 

 dred who embark in mercantile life, foil ; and this in spite of the terrific ener- 

 gy, the sharp inventive mind, the industrious and economic habits, and the gen- 

 eral morality of the Down East Yankee. 



The mechanical trades offer, it is true, a respectable livelihood ; but how few, 

 after laboring faithfully the best part of a life-time, have succeeded in giving 



