108 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



lam ever ready to doff ray hat to the man that can make or run a loco- 

 motive, that can construct a chronometer or grind the lenses for a 

 microscope or telescope, and equally ready to do the same to a lady 

 who can make her own garments or cook and serve a wholesome and 

 digestible meal, and who, like that Shunamite, can construct and keep 

 in trim a little chamber for the Lord's prophet or servant to rest in. 



Indulge me, if you please, while I offer one or two brief quotations 

 in support of manual training. A distinguished rabbi, who lived about 

 the time of our Saviour, declared : " He that teacheth not his son a 

 trade does the same as if he taught him to be a thief." And Gamaliel, 

 the teacher of the apostle Paul, said : " He that hath a trade in his 

 hand, to what is he like u ? He is like a vineyard that is fenced" that 

 is, he is fortified against the invasion of want and temptations, to which 

 he would otherwise be exposed. 



Addressing the students of St. Andrew's, Froude the historian 

 said : " It requires no intellect to be able to make a boat, or a house, 

 or a pair of shoes, or a suit of clothes, or hammer a horse-shoe, and if 

 you can do either of these, you have nothing to fear from fortune." 



"Ah," says the timid soul that has heard there is something de- 

 grading in manual labor, "but we shall lose caste if we join the ranks 

 of the laboring man ; we shall be cut by our old school-fellows and the 

 children of our wealthy neighbors." What matters it about the cut of 

 the unthinking if you retain your own approval and self-respect 1 ? Men 

 might just as well attempt to "snub the sun" as to snub the man who 

 consumes his own and asks no favors. Think of a dapper-dandy mak- 

 ing up his mind to snub Paul because he made tents, or Spinosa be- 

 cause he polished lenses, or Robert Burns because he followed the 

 plow. * * * 



You may have little fear of that kind of degradation that comes 

 from standing in the ranks with the carpenter of Kazareth, the fishers 

 of Galilee, the tent-maker of Tarsus, the stone-mason of Cromarty or 

 the rail splitter of Illinois. 



[Some of these quotations are from a discoures by Rev. R. Christie, D. D., 

 St. Paul, Minn.] 



