Boon's Lick Times

BE SOMETHING.

The following we take from a Boston paper. It no doubt suited the atmosphere for which it was written, and is not altogether inapplicable to "these parts :"

Be Something—says the talented Kingsbury, no matter what. Throw aside all collateral aids—of with your coats—and determine to work your way up. Providence has provided the ladder; there it is before you,—come, mount, mount. Don't fold your arms until you can find something that suits your talents. Take the chisel—the saw—the axe—the hammer. We recollect a young gentleman, an intimate friend, who was a few years since wealthy, being worth some $50,000. He was in excellent business; but the last panic, like a whirlwind swept his whole property overboard, and left him a bankrupt.— Did he remain idle? He braced himself up for a fresh struggle.

He minded not his delicate hands, but worked his passage from a western port to New Orleans. Finding nothing to do there, he worked his way up to New York. There we found him busy and contented as of old.

"What are you at now, Bill?

"At!—oh, I'm a porter to a broker in Wall street."

"Pay well, eh?"

"Why, enough to live on, I receive ninepence a day, and have the privilege of sleeping on his counter at night. Ha! ha! ha!—a broker's counter makes rather a hard bed.'"

"But, Bill, you ought not to live thus. Your talents should make you look higher,

"Ay, and so you would have me run the risk of starving, out of respect to my talents? I must do something. All I want is a foothold. Inquire for me a year from now."

In a year he had worked himself up to be confidential book keeper in a large New York establishment. He will be admitted as a partner soon, and will acquire another fortune. He adopted the true method to keep out of mischief.