Once into a new mining camp in the West there drove in the same "stage-coach" two young men who became friends on the journey. Each was out to seek his fortune and each hoped to find it in the new community. Each had his belongings in a "valise" and in each "valise" among those belongings was a "shingle," or name-plate, bearing each the name of its respective owner followed by the words "Attorney at Law." The young men compared their shingles and considered. The small camp would not need two lawyers, even if it would provide a living for one. So they "matched" coins (the American equivalent of tossing up) to see which of the two should erase "Attorney at Law" from his sign and substitute "Doctor of Medicine." Which is history; as also is the following: In another mining camp, some twenty-three years ago, there was at first no surveyor. Men paced off the boundaries of their claims and went to work as fancy inclined them, and 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.