But both they and society are losers by this. There is so much real ability for something useful that is thus sunk and wasted. The community is encumbered with a host of very incompetent barristers, preachers, physicians, writers, merchants, and so forth, and is deprived of as many good mechanics, and farmers, and laborers. What a pity it is that men will not be content to choose their pursuits according to their abilities. To encourage them to persist in any business for which they are not suited, and in which they never can obtain fortune or credit, is really unkind. It would be much less cruel to let them early feel the inconveniences of following a calling for which they are unfit, and go into one for which nature may have given them the requisite aptitude and powers.
But, in the ordering of a good Providence, failure in one pursuit does not imply failure in the next. I know and have proved this. The motto should be to keep moving, to try it again. Try it a hundred times, if you do not earlier succeed, and all the while be studying to see if you have not failed through some negligence and oversight of your own. Do not throw down your oars and drift stern foremost, because the tide happens to be against you. The tide does not always run the same way. Never anchor because the wind does not happen to be fair. Beat to windward, and gain all you can until it changes. If you get to the bottom of the wheel, hold on--never think of letting go. Let it move which way it will, you are sure to go up.
If in debt, do not let time wear off the edge of the obligation. Economize, work harder, spend less, and hurry out. If misfortune should overtake you, do not sit down and mope, and let her walk over you. Put on more steam, drive ahead, and get out of the way. If you meet obstacles in your path, climb over, dig under, or go around them--never turn back. If the day be stormy, you cannot mend matters by whining and complaining. Be good-natured, take it easy, for assuredly the sun will shine to-morrow.
If you lose money on a promising speculation, never think of collecting a coroner’s inquest about your dead body. Do not put on a long face because money is not so plentiful as usual--it will not add a single dollar to the circulating medium. Preserve your good-humor, for there is more health in a single hearty laugh than in a dozen glasses of rum. Be happy, and impart happiness to others. Look aloft, and trust in God. Be prudent as you please, but do not bleach out your hair, and pucker your face into wrinkles ten years ahead of time, by a self-inflicted fit of the dismals.