A Verse Digest of P. T. Barnum’s The Art of Money Getting (1880)
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DON’T MISTAKE YOUR VOCATION
young man starting in life
select the vocation most congenial
common for a father to say:
I have five boys
Billy a clergyman
John a lawyer
Tom a doctor
and Dick a farmer
what to do with Sammy?
Sammy, watch-making is a genteel business
I will make you a goldsmith
(regardless of Sam’s natural inclinations, or genius)
we are all born for a wise purpose
there is much diversity in our brains,
our countenances
some are born natural mechanics
some have aversion to machinery
a dozen boys of ten years get together
you will soon observe two or three
whittling out some ingenious device
working with locks, machinery
when they were but five
their father could find
no toy to please them
like a puzzle
they are natural mechanics
other boys have different aptitudes
I belong to the latter class
never the slightest love for mechanism
a sort of abhorrence for machinery
never ingenuity enough to whittle
never could make a pen that could write
such a boy might be able
to take apart and put together a watch
but all through life he would be working up hill,
seizing every excuse for leaving his work
unless a man enters the vocation intended by nature
and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed
we see many who have mistaken their calling
from the blacksmith up (or down) to the clergyman
the learned blacksmith
who ought to have been a
teacher of languages
lawyers, doctors, and clergymen
who were better fitted by nature
for the anvil or the lapstone
Money Getting, Part I, Part II, Part III
Money Getting is a verse digest of P.T. Barnum’s The Art of Money Getting (1880)