Nothing can be plainer, or more in accordance with common sense than this advice. Though it was written for the benefit of one person only, I feel that I am doing my young, and possibly some older, readers a service in transferring it to my pages, and commending them to heed it. In my own experience, which is by no means exceptional, I have known many who have been willing to move anywhere, and make any change, for the chance of earning a living more easily. About thirty years ago, a great wave of emigration flowed toward the far Pacific, and men of all callings and professions, including not a few college graduates, put on the miner’s humble garb and delved for gold among the mountains and by the river-courses of California. Some came back rich, but in many cases had they been willing to work as hard and live as frugally at the East, they would have fared as well. In this case, perhaps, it was as well to remove where the incentives to work overcame their natural indolence, and awakened their ambition.
In this country, fortunately, there are few places where an industrious man can not get a living, if he is willing to accept such work as falls in his way. This willingness often turns the scale, and converts threatening ruin into prosperity and success. Some years since, I made one of the passengers in a small steamer on Puget Sound. My attention was drawn to a young man, apparently about twenty, who was accompanied by his wife and two young children. They were emigrating from Indiana, I believe. He was evidently an industrious man, and his brown face and hands spoke of labor in the field, and under the summer sun. I entered into conversation, and my new acquaintance told me with perfect cheerfulness that when he arrived at Seattle, he would have just ten dollars left, to keep himself and family till he could secure work.
“How should I feel,” I could not help asking myself, “if I were placed in similar circumstances, though I had myself only to provide for?”
Yet the young man appeared quite undisturbed. He had faith in himself, and in Providence, and borrowed no trouble. I have no doubt he found something to do before his money gave out. He was not one of that shiftless and restless class to whom it is very clear Mr. Lincoln’s step-brother belonged. Such men thrive in a new country, and make a living anywhere.