“By no means. No man can be successful at anything unless he is industrious, and has common sense, and a good share of perseverance.”

“That’s so, I s’pose; but a blacksmith is the last thing I would be if I were in your place. I would like to know who ever suggested such an idea to you.”

“My father, several years ago; and less than five years ago I came within an ace of putting his advice into practice. I almost decided to go at it for life.”

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed his friend, heartily. “Wouldn’t you cut a dash donning a leathern apron and blowing the blacksmith’s bellows, like another Jack Smuttyface, as they used to call Jack Tower.”

“An honest calling,” answered Lincoln, “and that is the main thing. A lawyer can look a little more spruce than a son of Vulcan, to be sure; but a black smith can be just as upright, if not a little more so.”

“And what do you mean by ‘a little more so’?” asked Green.

“Why, don’t you know that nearly everybody suspects lawyers of trickery,—doing anything for a fee, blowing hot or cold for the sake of a case,—shielding the meanest culprits as readily as they do the best men—and all that sort of thing?”

“Not quite so bad as that, Abe. I know that lawyers are not over particular, and that is true of a good many folks who are not lawyers. If you won’t follow a calling because there are scapegraces in it, you will not choose one right away.”

“Perhaps so; but no man has any more right to defend the wrong because he is a lawyer than he has because he is a blacksmith, in my way of thinking.”

“I give it up, Abe; you’ve got the case already, and I’m more convinced than ever that you ought to study law.”

“That is, if you are judge and jury,” responded Lincoln. “But I don’t understand why it is that people are determined I shall be a lawyer. As many as ten months ago two or three people gave me the same advice, though I thought they were half in joke.”

“Well, Abe, perhaps you’ll get your eyes open, if you live long enough, to see what you ought to be,” said Green, in a strain of pleasantry. “Not many folks live that have to go to their neighbours to find out what they are. By the time you are seven feet high, perhaps you will understand.”

“I should think I was pretty near that now, by what people say,” archly replied Lincoln.

“I think you are in a fair way to be, if you keep on.”

“And I shall be a lawyer by that time, and not before.” And here they parted.

Lincoln had no intention of being a lawyer, after all that his friends had suggested. He had no confidence in his abilities for that profession. Indeed, he could not see how a young man reared as he was could expect to enter upon such a calling. Yet he longed for some permanent pursuit,—a life-vocation. He did not like this going from one thing to another, and he only did it from sheer necessity. He believed that a young man should choose a calling, and stick to it with unwearied devotion, if he would make anything in the world. He wanted to do this; but what should he choose? He was perplexed, troubled, and the more so because admiring friends advised him to do what he really supposed was beyond his ability. He underrated his talents (a very good failing), and all the time thought that others were overrating them. Few youths and young men suffer in this way. They are more apt to injure themselves by too exalted views of their talents. Some of the veriest simpletons esteem themselves as the wisest and greatest men. Ignorance is more likely to be vain and proud than ripe talents and learning. True knowledge is