STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. I4T 



overseers, or middlemen, or clerks, or place-men of some sort, who shall 

 we get to preside over and preach to? and what shall we have to oversee, 

 or sell, or insure? Fifty millions of people, all of whom have been 

 educated and habituated to live without work, simply by overseeing, and 

 insuring, and pleading for, and preaching to, and doctoring and governing 

 one another, will at least be an anomaly in the history of the world, and 

 yet this is exactly, what our present system of common and ux-common 

 schools, logically and inevit^ibly leads to. Hitherto we have had some ten 

 or twelve, or more millions of colored people, and people of foreign birth 

 on hand — not ground through this mill — to do our hard work for 

 us; but now we are getting them all together, black and white, as 

 fast as we can, into this universal hopper, and when we have ground them 

 all through, we fancy that the millennium will surely be on hand ; perhaps 

 it will; but I fancy that in any millennium of this world, when all over- 

 see, and no one works, others besides the "lion" will have to "eat straw 

 like the ox " ; if indeed they can get any straw to eat. Disguise it as we 

 will, there must needs be a "considerable sprinkling" of down-right hand 

 work on this continent of ours, done by somebody; in order to annually 

 feed and clothe fifty millions of people, whether anybody has been , 

 educated to do it, or is willing to do it, or not. It can not all be done by 

 schoolmen, nor overseers, nor clerks; nor even by insurance-agents, or 

 office-seekers. But when no class has been either educated or insured to 

 do it, but all classes, black and white, native and foreign, have been 

 schooled into the same distaste and incapacity for work, as the vast 

 majority of our native Americans have been already, in all our larger 

 towns and villages, where this modern system has had full plav, who will 

 do the needful work? Johnny Chinaman may come in to help us out, it 

 is true — but is it probable that any such reliance will serve us? It is true 

 these evils like all other evils will at last cure themselves, either through 

 the timely reforms of social wisdom, or the inevitable disasters of social 

 folly. 



"It is an old adage, that "No man can be a perfect fool until he has 

 studied Latin." ^ I have studied it for years, and have therefore a right to 

 the precedence. Like all old, terse, and exaggerated sayings, this one 

 also contains a great truth, namely: that the greatest of all possible fools 

 is the man who makes the book an end, instead of a means; his authorit}'^, 

 instead of his help; his master, instead of his servant: for no possible 

 language can be anything more than a bare symbol of some fact, rela- 

 tion, duty, or event, which it is intended to symbolize or signify. If it 

 actually helps us to find the real thing signified, therefore, it is of vast 

 use to us; but if not, it is at best of no possible use at all, and may, and 

 often docs, inflict upon us the curse of filling us with v^'ind instead of 

 wisdom for all after life. This results from the very nature of all possible 

 language itself, whether it be true or false, inspired or uninspired. If it 

 does not help us to find in nature and in fact the precise principle, or 

 thing, or event signified, it can do nothing for us, or only what is worse 

 than nodiing. The real principles involved in all past events, or sup- 

 posed events, and the results that are to come out of them, in the present 



