Another opened to me the more ambitious prospect of a shopman at his "store," near Rochester, and even showed me, by way of temptation, some of the brilliant wares over whose fortunes I should preside. There were ginghams, and taffetas, and cottons of every hue and pattern. But no, I felt this was not my walk either; and so I muttered to myself: "No, Con! if you meddle with muslin, wait till it's fashioned into a petticoat."
My next proposition came from a barber; and really if I did not take to the pole and basin, I own I was flattered at his praises of my skill. He pronounced my brush-hand as something bold and masterly as Rubens',--while my steel manipulation was more brilliant than bloodless.
Then there was a Jew spectacle-maker, a hawker of pamphlets, an Indian moccasin merchant, and twenty other of various walks,--all of whom seemed to opine that _their_ craft, whatever it might be, was exactly the very line adapted to my faculties. Once only was I really tempted: it was by the editor of the Kingston newspaper, "The Ontario Herald," who offered to take me into his office, and in time induct me into the gentle pastime of paragraph-writing. I did, I own, feel a strong inclination for that free and independent kind of criticism, which, although issuing from a garret, and by the light of a "dip," does not scruple to remind royalty how to comport itself, and gives kings and kaisers smart lessons in good-breeding. For a time, my mind dwelt on all these delights with ardor; but I soon felt that he who _acts_ life has an incomparable advantage over him who merely _writes_ it, and that even a poor performer is better, when the world is his stage, than the best critic.
"I'll wait," thought I,--nothing within, no suggestive push from conscience, urged me to follow any of these roads; and so I journeyed away from Kingston to Fort George, thence to Niagara, where I amused myself agreeably for a week, sitting all day long upon the Table Rock, and watching the Falls in a dreamy kind of self-consciousness, brought on by the din, the crash, the spray, the floating surf, and that vibration of the air on every side, which all conspire to make up a sensation that ever after associates with the memory of that scene, and leaves any effort to describe it so difficult.