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 ill, 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
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