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them, and how shall he begin ? It might take a very long time to find 

 out all that is to be done with them, but he must have found oiit, at 

 once, that he was to begin with his hands. And then with his hands 

 he shaped the stones into rijde tools, and felled the trees, and shaped 

 wood into other i-ude tools and implements. At length he delved into 

 the mines, and found out methods of purifying the metals, and shaping 

 them into more perfect tools and implements. His hands made tools, and 

 with tools in his hands he made other tools, and tools by degrees grew into 

 machinery. At first he employed simply his own strength, and then he 

 mastered the animals, and by his hand commanded and directed their 

 greater strength. By and by, the forces of Nature were revealed to him, 

 and the streams and the winds became obedient to his uses. How wonder- 

 ful the growth of the arts of industry, from the period when man had 

 his hands alone, to the period when as now he wields the forces of Na- 

 ture by complicated and perfected machinery — using his hands no less 

 than before, but grasping in them a thousand instrumentalities by which 

 the number of his hands seems multiplied a thousand fold, and he views 

 himself a Briareus stretching out the arms of his power, hke a delega- 

 ted King over Nature herself, commanding the most subtle and potent 

 elements, and making even the lightnings to run upon his errands ! 



And with all the power and skill Avhich he has acquired, how has he 

 appropriated the riches of the earth ? Here on the earth were found 

 various fruits and roots and grains, but all in a wild state scattered here 

 and there, while the great forests seemed to usurp most of the earth's 

 surface. Where there were open fields he seized upon them; and 

 where the forest reigned, he by his invading industry made open fields ; 

 and he turned up the soil with spade and plough, and he planted and 

 sowed, and cultivated until the fruits and roots and grains grew more rich 

 and luscious and produced more abundantly, and the earth was covered 

 with fruit trees and vines and esculent plants and waving harvest fields. 



How vast a portion of human history is buried in oblivion ! The 

 historian has recorded the deeds of war, but who has written the stnig- 

 gles of patient persevering industry ? Who has told us the story of 

 husbandry from its feeble beginnings until triumphant harvest hymns 

 were sung by myriads rejoicing over the abundance which labor had 

 produced ? And yet there must have been the-se small beginnings — 

 and this gradual progress cari'ied forward by experiments often disap- 



