The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-11-16

u be" when you grow up and be-
come a man. Or maybe you
are hesitating between-let us say
the exciting. dangerous life of loco
motive engineer or the driver of a
fire-engine. At all events you ana
nearly all of your boy companions
talk often and excitedly about the
things you will do when your school
ing is over and you are out in the
sworld making your own living.
Somehow-as you will discover
later-a boy rarely follows his boy
hood ambition. So many things hap
pen as you grow older and your ideas
change. But that fact need not dis
courage you. Almost every young
man finally settles upon a certain am
bition and is just as happy in realiz-
Ing It as he was eager and exhilarated
over his boyhood one. Here are set
forth the boyish ambitions of severai
prominent men and you can see for
yourself how different they were from
the ones they held to In later life:
OF course. nearly every boy, at
some time, thinks and dreams of
himself as President of the United
States. But after a while he passes
that up as too improbable of attain
ment. There can be but one man
President at the same time, you
know, and there are so many men
eager for the office. And yet here is
a boy who never wanted to be Presi-
dent-yet now isl Certainly. Wood
row Wilson.
When President Wilson was four
teen years of age his one great am
bition was to be a naval cadet or,
at least, the captain of n great ves-
sci. He was living in Columbia, s.
c., at the time and had never even
seen the sea. Still, he became an
Admiral" without any trouble what
ever. How? Why, he simply i'm
agined himself at the head of a
mighty fleet busy in running down a
desperate blood-thirsty band of pi-
rates in the South Pacific.
He hung scores of them to yard
arms every day and sent in detailed
reports of his deeds to the Navy
Department" He wrote, day by day
in diary form, of the long swift pur-
suit of the pirate crews and the
final tracking of them to their
hiding place in some sheltered bay;
then of the summary punishment
not until he was eighteen years of
age and vitality interested in his
school work that he finally gave up
his desire to sail the high seas.
What do you think Vice-President
Marshall wanted to "be" when he was
boy? A shoemaker! AS you know,
he became a lawyer, then Governor
of Indiana and then Vice President.
Qttf oh haa n
told him. when a boy, that he would
become all those distinguished things
he might still have preferred to work
at bench with an awl and a piece
of leather.
There is a reason, OF course, for
this peculiar ambition of his. One
of his best friends, 1t seems, was an
old German shoemaker beside whose
bench he used to sit of afternoons
and on Saturdays and listen to him
tell wonderful stories of life In Ger
many and travels and of'the big bat
ties that had changed the map of
Europe in the past This old shoe
maker became his hero and young
Marshall thought that If he. too,
could become a cobbler he would be
able to travel all over the world and
meet the heroes of many wars. as his
old friend had done.
Senator James Hamilton Lewis, of
Illinois. was filled with Joy at the
thought of becoming baker when
he grew up. Not that he was par
ticularly in love with the life or the
work. But then, you see, he could
eat all the pies and cakes and crul-
lers he wanted to!
1t was most natural that Senator
Sterling, OF South Dakota, should
have wished to become soldier, for
when he was a boy the dreadful Civil
War was filling the very air with the
microbes of battles and guns and
marching men. Had 1t not been that
he was only about ten years of age
you may be certain he would have
: enlisted. AS it was, he would march
UP and down with a wooden gun and
tin sword for hours each day pre-
tending he was leading his company
in desperate charge against "the
enemy"
Representative O'Hair of Illinois,
realized his boyhood ambition for a
time but finally abandoned it for a
better one His big brother was a