in the town which began to grow up
houses were built at random regardless of any street-line and with no
finnicking considerations of a building frontage. So a young fellow
whose claim was unpromising sent out to civilisation for a set of
instruments (he had never seen a transit or a level before) and began
business as a surveyor. He used to come to me secretly that I might
figure out for him the cubic contents of a ditch or the superficial area
of a wall. He could barely write and knew no arithmetic at all; but he
worked most of the night as well as all the day, and when the town took
to itself a form of organised government he was appointed official
surveyor and within a few weeks thereafter was made surveyor to the
county. I doubt not that G---- T---- is rich and prosperous to-day.

On a certain wharf, no matter where, lounged half a dozen seamen when to
them came the owner of a vessel. It was in the days of '49 when anything
that could be made to float was being put into commission in the
California trade, and men who could navigate were scarce.

"Can any of you men" said the newcomer "take a boat out for me to San
Francisco?"

"I'll do it, sir" said one stepping forward.

"Thunder, Bill!" exclaimed a comrade in an undertone, "you don't know
nothing about navigating."

"Shut your mouth," said Bill. "Maybe I don't know nothing now, but you
bet I will by the time I get to 'Frisco."

The same spirit guides almost every young American who drifts West to
tackle hopefully whatever job the gods may send. The cases wherein he
has any destiny marked out for him or any especial preference as to the
lines on which his future career shall run (except that he may hope
ultimately to be President of the United States) are comparatively few.
In ten years, he may be a grocer or a banker or a dry-goods merchant or
a real-estate man or a lawyer. Whatever he is, more likely than not ten
years later he will be something else.

"What is your trade?" is the first question which an Englishman asks of
an applicant for employment; and the answer will probably be truthful
and certainly unimaginative.

"What can you do?" the American enquires under the same circumstances.
"'Most anything. What have you got to do?" is commonly the reply.

It is an extraordinarily impressive experience for an Englishman to go
out from the old-established well-formulated ways of the club-life and
street-life of London, to assist in--not merely to watch