The Art of Money Getting - P. T. Barnum (top novels TXT) 📗

genteel business; I think I will make you a goldsmith.”

He does this, regardless of Sam’s natural inclinations, or genius.

 

We are all, no doubt, born for a wise purpose. There is as much

diversity in our brains as in our countenances. Some are born natural

mechanics, while some have great aversion to machinery. Let a dozen boys

of ten years get together, and you will soon observe two or three are

“whittling” out some ingenious device; working with locks or complicated

machinery. When they were but five years old, their father could find no

toy to please them like a puzzle. They are natural mechanics; but the

other eight or nine boys have different aptitudes. I belong to the

latter class; I never had the slightest love for mechanism; on the

contrary, I have a sort of abhorrence for complicated machinery. I never

had ingenuity enough to whittle a cider tap so it would not leak. I

never could make a pen that I could write with, or understand the

principle of a steam engine. If a man was to take such a boy as I was,

and attempt to make a watchmaker of him, the boy might, after an

apprenticeship of five or seven years, be able to take apart and put

together a watch; but all through life he would be working up hill and

seizing every excuse for leaving his work and idling away his time.

Watchmaking is repulsive to him.

 

Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and

best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to

believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation. Yet

we see many who have mistaken their calling, from the blacksmith up (or

down) to the clergyman. You will see, for instance, that extraordinary

linguist the “learned blacksmith,” who ought to have been a teacher of

languages; and you may have seen lawyers, doctors and clergymen who were

better fitted by nature for the anvil or the lapstone.

SELECT THE RIGHT LOCATION

After securing the right vocation, you must be careful to select the

proper location. You may have been cut out for a hotel keeper, and they

say it requires a genius to “know how to keep a hotel.” You might

conduct a hotel like clock-work, and provide satisfactorily for five

hundred guests every day; yet, if you should locate your house in a

small village where there is no railroad communication or public travel,

the location would be your ruin. It is equally important that you do not

commence business where there are already enough to meet all demands in

the same occupation. I remember a case which illustrates this subject.

When I was in London in 1858, I was passing down Holborn with an English

friend and came to the “penny shows.” They had immense cartoons outside,

portraying the wonderful curiosities to be seen “all for a penny.” Being

a little in the “show line” myself, I said “let us go in here.” We soon

found ourselves in the presence of the illustrious showman, and he

proved to be the sharpest man in that line I had ever met. He told us

some extraordinary stories in reference to his bearded ladies, his

Albinos, and his Armadillos, which we could hardly believe, but thought

it “better to believe it than look after the proof’.” He finally begged

to call our attention to some wax statuary, and showed us a lot of the

dirtiest and filthiest wax figures imaginable. They looked as if they

had not seen water since the Deluge.

 

“What is there so wonderful about your statuary?” I asked.

 

“I beg you not to speak so satirically,” he replied, “Sir, these are

not Madam Tussaud’s wax figures, all covered with gilt and tinsel and

imitation diamonds, and copied from engravings and photographs. Mine,

sir, were taken from life. Whenever you look upon one of those figures,

you may consider that you are looking upon the living individual.”

 

Glancing casually at them, I saw one labeled “Henry VIII,” and feeling a

little curious upon seeing that it looked like Calvin Edson, the living

skeleton, I said: “Do you call that ‘Henry the Eighth?’” He replied,

“Certainly; sir; it was taken from life at Hampton Court, by special

order of his majesty; on such a day.”

 

He would have given the hour of the day if I had resisted; I said,

“Everybody knows that ‘Henry VIII.’ was a great stout old king, and that

figure is lean and lank; what do you say to that?”

 

“Why,” he replied, “you would be lean and lank yourself if you sat there

as long as he has.”

 

There was no resisting such arguments. I said to my English friend, “Let

us go out; do not tell him who I am; I show the white feather; he beats

me.”

 

He followed us to the door, and seeing the rabble in the street, he

called out, “ladies and gentlemen, I beg to draw your attention to the

respectable character of my visitors,” pointing to us as we walked away.

I called upon him a couple of days afterwards; told him who I was, and

said:

 

“My friend, you are an excellent showman, but you have selected a bad

location.”

 

He replied, “This is true, sir; I feel that all my talents are thrown

away; but what can I do?”

 

“You can go to America,” I replied. “You can give full play to your

faculties over there; you will find plenty of elbowroom in America; I

will engage you for two years; after that you will be able to go on your

own account.”

 

He accepted my offer and remained two years in my New York Museum. He

then went to New Orleans and carried on a traveling show business during

the summer. To-day he is worth sixty thousand dollars, simply because he

selected the right vocation and also secured the proper location. The

old proverb says, “Three removes are as bad as a fire,” but when a man

is in the fire, it matters but little how soon or how often he removes.

AVOID DEBT

Young men starting in life should avoid running into debt. There is

scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt. It is a slavish

position to get in, yet we find many a young man, hardly out of his

“teens,” running in debt. He meets a chum and says, “Look at this: I

have got trusted for a new suit of clothes.” He seems to look upon the

clothes as so much given to him; well, it frequently is so, but, if he

succeeds in paying and then gets trusted again, he is adopting a habit

which will keep him in poverty through life. Debt robs a man of his

self-respect, and makes him almost despise himself. Grunting and

groaning and working for what he has eaten up or worn out, and now when

he is called upon to pay up, he has nothing to show for his money; this

is properly termed “working for a dead horse.” I do not speak of

merchants buying and selling on credit, or of those who buy on credit in

order to turn the purchase to a profit. The old Quaker said to his

farmer son, “John, never get trusted; but if thee gets trusted for

anything, let it be for ‘manure,’ because that will help thee pay it

back again.”

 

Mr. Beecher advised young men to get in debt if they could to a small

amount in the purchase of land, in the country districts. “If a young

man,” he says, “will only get in debt for some land and then get

married, these two things will keep him straight, or nothing will.” This

may be safe to a limited extent, but getting in debt for what you eat

and drink and wear is to be avoided. Some families have a foolish habit

of getting credit at “the stores,” and thus frequently purchase many

things which might have been dispensed with.

 

It is all very well to say; “I have got trusted for sixty days, and if I

don’t have the money the creditor will think nothing about it.” There is

no class of people in the world, who have such good memories as

creditors. When the sixty days run out, you will have to pay. If you do

not pay, you will break your promise, and probably resort to a

falsehood. You may make some excuse or get in debt elsewhere to pay it,

but that only involves you the deeper.

 

A good-looking, lazy young fellow, was the apprentice boy, Horatio. His

employer said, “Horatio, did you ever see a snail?” “I - think - I -

have,” he drawled out. “You must have met him then, for I am sure you

never overtook one,” said the “boss.” Your creditor will meet you or

overtake you and say, “Now, my young friend, you agreed to pay me; you

have not done it, you must give me your note.” You give the note on

interest and it commences working against you; “it is a dead horse.” The

creditor goes to bed at night and wakes up in the morning better off

than when he retired to bed, because his interest has increased during

the night, but you grow poorer while you are sleeping, for the interest

is accumulating against you.

 

Money is in some respects like fire; it is a very excellent servant but

a terrible master. When you have it mastering you; when interest is

constantly piling up against you, it will keep you down in the worst

kind of slavery. But let money work for you, and you have the most

devoted servant in the world. It is no “eye-servant.” There is nothing

animate or inanimate that will work so faithfully as money when placed

at interest, well secured. It works night and day, and in wet or dry

weather.

 

I was born in the blue-law State of Connecticut, where the old Puritans

had laws so rigid that it was said, “they fined a man for kissing his

wife on Sunday.” Yet these rich old Puritans would have thousands of

dollars at interest, and on Saturday night would be worth a certain

amount; on Sunday they would go to church and perform all the duties of

a Christian. On waking up on Monday morning, they would find themselves

considerably richer than the Saturday night previous, simply because

their money placed at interest had worked faithfully for them all day

Sunday, according to law!

 

Do not let it work against you; if you do there is no chance for success

in life so far as money is concerned. John Randolph, the eccentric

Virginian, once exclaimed in Congress, “Mr. Speaker, I have discovered

the philosopher’s stone: pay as you go.” This is, indeed, nearer to the

philosopher’s stone than any alchemist has ever yet arrived.

PERSEVERE

When a man is in the right path, he must persevere. I speak of this

because there are some persons who are “born tired;” naturally lazy and

possessing no self-reliance and no perseverance. But they can cultivate

these qualities, as Davy Crockett said:

 

“This thing remember, when I am dead: Be sure you are right, then go

ahead.”

 

It is this go-aheaditiveness, this determination not to let the

“horrors” or the “blues” take possession of you, so as to make you relax

your energies in the struggle for independence, which you must

cultivate.

 

How many have almost reached the goal of their ambition, but, losing

faith in themselves, have relaxed their energies, and the golden prize

has been lost forever.

 

It is, no doubt, often true, as Shakespeare says:

 

“There is a tide in