PREFACE. 



not only to my own household, but to my neighbours and 

 the people of the district too, that this was my way at the 

 time. Do you the same, and rest assured that your reward 

 will follow; sooner or later, come it will. Persevere in 

 whatever you undertake; carry it through; don't stand 

 humming and hawing, moments once past are beyond our 

 power of redemption, only the present is ours. Take time, 

 my young friends, by the forelock, as my fellow -workmen 

 said I did, and then I have no fear of you. 



"Keep this ever in your minds, that no idler will do 

 anything but evil; and though some of you may not be 

 called to work for your daily bread, you could labour other- 

 wise. "We are told, in the very best of Books, that we were 

 all made to labour ; and had it not been expressly for our 

 advantage, that truth never would have been uttered. It is 

 not necessary that we should be living here ; but living, it 

 is absolutely requisite to our very existence that we should 

 do something much better to labour, even if only for our 

 amusement, than to be doing nothing. 



" Now, in becoming workers, either for amusement or a 

 living, I need hardly tell you that it is neither possible nor 

 desirable that all should labour in the same way, or for the 

 same end ; yet everybody can do something. The more 

 individual or original that something may be, so much the 

 better. To every one God has given his talent ; and what- 

 ever that talent may be, don't hide it in the earth, for it 

 won't grow there. *Na, na, loons, ye manna dee that;' if 

 you value yourselves, 'ye manna dee that.' You must 

 improve it, as you will yet be called upon by the Giver to 

 restore it with interest; and every talent, mind ye, is 

 capable of much improvement; it'll grow it'll do some- 

 thing, if you have only the will to make it. 



" You would do well to study and emulate whatever is 



