CHAPTER X.
WHAT CAREER?
Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five-barred gate.
A dog by instinct turns aside Who sees the ditch too deep and wide.
But man we find the only creature Who, led by folly, combats nature; Who, when she loudly cries--Forbear! With obstinacy fixes there; And where his genius least inclines, Absurdly bends his whole designs.
SWIFT.
The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs .-- EMERSON.
Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent.

Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing .-- SYDNEY SMITH.
"Every man has got a Fort," said Artemus Ward.

"It's some men's fort to do one thing, and some other men's fort to do another, while there is numeris shiftless critters goin' round loose whose fort is not to do nothin'.
"Twice I've endevered to do things which they wasn't my Fort.

The first time was when I undertook to lick a owdashus cuss who cut a hole in my tent and krawld threw.

Sez I, 'My jentle sir, go out, or I shall fall onto you putty hevy.' Sez he, 'Wade in, Old Wax Figgers,' whereupon I went for him, but he cawt me powerful on the hed and knockt me threw the tent into a cow pastur.