PREFACE. XI 



dcr, impartially, the contents of this slight volume, I know 

 that I shall not have written it in vain. 



We need to mingle more thought with our work. Some 

 think till their heads ache intensely ; others work till their 

 backs are crooked to the semblance of half #n iron hoop ; 

 but the workers and the thinkers are apt to be distinct 

 classes ; whereas, they should be the same. Admit that it 

 has always been thus, it by no means follows that it always 

 should or shall be. In an age when every laborer's son may 

 be fairly educated if he will, there should be more fruit 

 gathered from the tree of knowledge to justify the magnifi- 

 cent promise of its foliage and its bloom. I rejoice in the 

 belief that the graduates of our common schools are better 

 ditch-diggers, when they can no otherwise employ them- 

 selves to better advantage, than though they knew not how 

 to read ; but that is not enough. If the untaught peasantry 

 of Eussia or Hungary grow more wheat per acre than the 

 comparatively educated farmers of the United States, our 

 education is found wanting. That is a vicious and defective 

 if not radically false mental training which leaves its subject 

 no better qualified for any useful calling than though he were 

 unlettered. But I forbear to pursue this ever-fruitful theme. 



I look back, on this day completing my sixtieth year, over 

 a life, which must now be near its close, of constant effort to 

 achieve ends whereof many seem in the long retrospect to 

 have been transitory and unimportant, however they may 



