ANDROSCOGGIN COUNTY SOCIETY. £29 



the common level, you -will not ; but if you resolve to be something 

 in the world in which you live, and be somebody among other men, 

 you will — and neither poverty nor wealth can forbid. You can, 

 however, hope for but'little, unless you aim high and act accord- 

 ingly; and your aim must be high, that your acts may be noble. 

 Don't for a moment think that a man is a man, because he is a 

 dandy; neither broadcloth, jewel-ornaments, nor self-conceitedness 

 make a man. A man is a man, because he is a man, and nothing 

 but his manliness can make him a man. Gather up knowledge, 

 therefore, as the safest investment, as the surest capital, — as a bank 

 where your drafts will be honored at sight, — an agent that will open 

 broad the highway to success. Instead of wasting jour spare hours 

 and evenings in taverns, stores and shops, spend them at home, with 

 books and facts, of art and science. Learn to think. And from 

 your thoughts, act, remembering that he is noblest who most nobly 

 does. There are those who would degrade labor — make it mean 

 and low-born to earn "our daily bread" by "the sweat of the brow." 

 But it is only through the blessing of labor that we are what we 

 are. He who despises labor, despises his birthright, tramples under 

 foot the royalty of his nature, and becomes a slave to vanity and 

 ignorance. Such possess but little of the true nobility of manhood. 

 I pity the imbecility and want of self-respect in those young men 

 who turn their backs upon manly toil, and drift along life's uncer- 

 tain current without any real object or aim in view. Such — and 

 such there are — young men with stalwart frames and muscles like 

 steel, who, if they can get a second-class clerkship in some candy- 

 shop or beer-saloon, or third-rate milliner's store — talk and swell, 

 and act, as though they were at the head of all human affairs, and 

 that without them all things in heaven, on earth, and under the 

 earth, would turn back again into chaos.* See, in your mind, such 

 an one, as he stands in his accustomed place, and sells to that light 

 tripping school miss a sugar heart — fit emblem of his own; or with 

 what a patronizing air he serves out to that blpated reeling wreck of 

 humanity, a glass of lager-bier ; or with what a dignified suavity 

 he deals out to that old lady, a piece of tape, a darning-needle, or a 

 diaper-pin. And this is thought to be manly — something more 

 dignifying and honorable than the labor of the farm or the dust of 

 the shop. What concentrated folly ! 



