"Some men are born to greatness--some achieve greatness--and some have greatness thrust upon them." Henry Manning belonged to the second of these three great classes. The son of a mercantile adventurer, who won and lost a fortune by speculation, he found himself at sixteen years of age called on to choose between the life of a Western farmer, with its vigorous action, stirring incident and rough usage--and the life of a clerk in one of the most noted establishments in Broadway, the great source and centre of fashion in New-York. Mr. Morgan, the brother of Mrs. Manning, who had been recalled from the distant West by the death of her husband, and the embarrassments into which that event had plunged her, had obtained the offer of the latter situation for one of his two nephews, and would take the other with him to his prairie-home. "I do not ask you to go with me, Matilda," he said to his sister, "because our life is yet too wild and rough to suit a delicate woman, reared, as you have been, in the midst of luxurious refinements. The difficulties and privations of life in the West fall most heavily upon woman, while she has little of that sustaining power which man's more adventurous spirit finds in overcoming difficulty and coping with danger. But let me have one of your boys; and by the time he has arrived at manhood, he will be able, I doubt not, to offer you in his home all the comforts, if not all the elegances of your present abode." Mrs. Manning consented; and now the question was, which of her sons should remain with her, and which should accompany Mr. Morgan. To Henry Manning, older by two years than his brother George, the choice of situations was submitted. He went with his uncle to the Broadway establishment, heard the duties which would be demanded from him, the salary which would be given, saw the grace with which the _elegants_ behind the counter displayed their silks, and satins, and velvets, to the _elegantes_ before the counter, and the decision with which they promulgated the decrees of fashion; and with that just sense of his own powers, which is the accompaniment of true genius, he decided at once that there lay his vocation. George, who had not been without difficulty kept quiet, while his brother was forming his decision, as soon as it was announced, sprang forward with a whoop that would have suited a Western forest better than a New-York drawing-room, threw the Horace he was reading across the table, clasped first his mother and then his uncle in his arms, and exclaimed, "I am the boy for the West. I will help you fell forests and build cities there, uncle. Why should not we build cities as well as Romulus and Remus?" "I will supply your cities with all their silks, and satins, and velvets, and laces, and charge them nothing, George," said Henry Manning, with that air of superiority with which the worldly-wise often look on the sallies of the enthusiast.