Hauling Secrets

Good haulers know that if a piece of paper is spilling out of an old-looking box, you should always take a moment to see what it is. Especially if it the box has been gathering dust in the attic of a mansion whose owner claims it was left there by the owner-before-last.

It might turn out to be a phrenological reading from 1855:

Phrenological Character of [name of subject],
given at Fowlers and Wells and Co.’s Phrenological Cabinet,
142 Washington Street, Boston, Mass.
by D P[?] Butter, Professor of Phrenology
April 6th 1855

You have a predominance of brain and of the nervous system over the physical strength and energy. Your sphere will be one that will require some headwork and scholarship rather than physical strength and courage. You are rather delicately organized physically for a man and will never be capable of heavy work, yet it would be well for you to have some physical exercise if the labor is light and out-door, by way of developing your body… Your general character is [?] modest and diffident. I should think you had been taken too good care of and had not relied enough upon your own resources. It would be a good thing for you to rely entirely upon your own efforts for a few years to come so as to develop these qualities which give courage, energy and physical strength and self-reliance and develop your mind. Unless[?] you do this act. – Although it is the fact that you are not calculated for heavy work and exposure yet, it is absolutely necessary that you rely upon your own resources and take a more independent course and rely less upon your friends than you have done. If you do not you will always be wanting in that kind of courage, confidence and strength of character and courage that makes a man. Your mind is active and susceptible to culture and to development by education. Your feelings are quite favorable to moral influences and being quite an honest and moral man. Your greatest deficiency is in a want of selfishness, or those elements which give strength and positiveness of character. Make is a rule to think and act for yourself to claim your rights and to be more hopeful and enterprising and launch out over a bolder scale. Be more ready to assume responsibility and take more risk and feel that you can do and undertake in accordance with that feeling. Improve your leisure moments in gaining knowledge. It would be well for you to have a good education but you should not get it by books. Instead of applying your mind steadily and wholly to books at once it would be well for you to use your knowledge as fast as you gain it, either in teaching or in communicating it in any offhand manner which will have a tendency to make yo upractical and give you courage and self-reliance. You now have more of the disposition to acquire than to use and communicate what you know and gain.
Your social nature is largely developed. You are unusually affectionate for a man, appear to have had the affections highly cultivated. This is all well enough and desirable in its place, but affection should not predominate over strength and force of character in a man. You are really affectionate as a friend and as a child and will be as a parent and a husband when you enter those relations. You have need to be careful in the formation of your habits socially for your feelings are strong and you will have some tendencies, yet your motives are good moral ties[?] to your character but you have need to cultivate resistance independence and self-control more than any thing else’ in order to control those qualities properly learn to say No when you think no and are sure you are right. Learn to run the risk and assume the responsibility and be ready to undertake when your intellect tells you that that is right or is the best course. Let your intellect decide what you shall do and not your feelings, for your feelings make you too modest and diffident for your judgment.
You would succeed very well in teaching though[?] the ability to control and govern is not so great as the ability to acquire and communicate your knowledge. You have got a strong will which manifests itself in giving you steadiness and stability of character. You are reliable in a moral point of view but you rather shrink form encountering difficulties and applying your mind closely when difficult things are to be done. You must bring your mind up to a more positive state of action and accustom yourself to doing things and holding your mind to them when it is necessary. Cultivate cool severity and energy that never yields or gives back morely[?] because there are difficulties to be encountered.
You are not a money catcher or schemer and are not well calculated for a trading sphere; would not be sharp shrewd and economizing enough for trading business in ordinary circumstance, - Would do much better for [long blank] in a literary or educational sphere. If a mechanic should engage in something of an artificial nature – or at any rate in that which requires imitation criticism and taste, Would do very well as connected with civil engineering, drafting, designing “Etc” You would succeed better where it requires perfidy[?] and finish and where it requires intelligence in mechanics than where it requires strength and manual labor [?]. You are candid open hearted and speak out your thoughts and feelings freely when there is no danger in doing so, are honest and sincere, rather than cunning or evasive.
You are very sensitive to what others think and say of you and depend too much upon encouragement, should cultivate hopefulness and that feeling which says “I know as well as others” and prompts you to acting out that sentiment immediately. You are [?] and kind hearted, have very strong sympathies and in fact are too yielding. You have much quick wit and mirth but are rather too sensitive to joke severely and are rather too diffident to joke often, except where you are well acquainted – Should observe little things more minutely and cultivate your meory of little ethings, you think and plan enough, should be more prompt in carrying your plans into execution.
Reported phonographically by Wm[?] Hemstress[?]

My favorite bits of advice from the preceding:

• You have need to be careful in the formation of your habits socially for your feelings are strong and you will have some “tendencies”…
• Learn to say No when you think no and are sure you are right
• Launch out over a bolder scale
• Cultivate cool severity

A little internet research reveals that the person who recieved this skull examination went on to graduate from Harvard six years later and achieve a high degree of success in his field, to the point where a few different University libraries house portions of his collected letters. Looks like he took the Professor’s advice and decided against a job in manual labor. Whether or not he succeeded in quelling those “tendencies” is a question lost to history….

Further reading on Fowlers and Wells phrenology