Young man, remember
if you know what people need you have
gotten more knowledge of a fortune than any
amount of capital can give you.
There was a poor man out of work living in
Hingham, Massachusetts. He lounged around the
house until one day his wife told him to get out
and work, and, as he lived in Massachusetts, he
obeyed his wife. He went out and sat down on
the shore of the bay, and whittled a soaked
shingle into a wooden chain. His children that
evening quarreled over it, and he whittled a
second one to keep peace. While he was whittling
the second one a neighbor came in and said:
``Why don't you whittle toys and sell them? You
could make money at that.'' ``Oh,'' he said, ``I
would not know what to make.'' ``Why don't
you ask your own children right here in your
own house what to make?'' ``What is the use
of trying that?'' said the carpenter. ``My children
are different from other people's children.''
(I used to see people like that when I taught
school.) But he acted upon the hint, and the
next morning when Mary came down the stairway,
he asked, ``What do you want for a toy?''
She began to tell him she would like a doll's bed,
a doll's washstand, a doll's carriage, a little doll's
umbrella, and went on with a list of things that
would take him a lifetime to supply.
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