AND WHERE TO FIND ONE. 335 



I grant that change of occupation is sometimes 

 desirable and prudent, sometimes even necessary. 

 When driven to it by pecuniary calamity, it should 

 be made courageously, and with utter contempt of 

 the jibes or sneers of others. I know the world is 

 full of scarecrows but why is it that they are al 

 ways black ? Go into the newly planted cornfields, 

 and you wall see the unfolding blade protected by 

 effigies as woeful as if clad in the cast off inexpress 

 ibles of a rebel regiment. Old hats and older coats, 

 mounted painfully on crooked sticks, or waving to 

 and fro in the wind, suspended from patriarchal 

 apple-trees, these are scarecrows but what sim 

 pletons the crows must be for being thus easily 

 frightened off from a living. Yet one need not go 

 so far as even the nearest cornfield for a counter 

 part. There is a scarecrow of some kind in every 

 house, domesticated at every fireside, nestling in 

 every bosom. Old hats and worn out inexpressi 

 bles may serve to frighten crows, and we may smile 

 at their simplicity in thus being kept at bay ; but 

 who among us, no matter how straitened or de 

 pressed, that does not find the prospect of reassum- 

 ing even his own cast off toggery to be the unsus 

 pected scarecrow of his own heart ? Pride, per 

 sonal, foolish, utterly groundless, is the great 

 national scarecrow. Too many of us are slaves to 

 appearances, mere walking advertisements of the 

 milliner or tailor. Strangely enough, one leaves his 

 brown stone mansion and takes to boarding, with 

 out compunction ; but the thought of earning bread 

 by apparently mean employment, is absolutely kill- 



