102 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Until recent!}' labor has been growing less and less respectable 

 since our great-grandfathers' da3's. A great artist* has lately said, 

 " It is the curse of the age that young people wish to jump into 

 maturity at a bound, and that the desire is not to do, but to 'get 

 done ' ; to deal in tlie article, not to make. Respectability has 

 cursed this age in this country — a craftsman is not supposed to 

 be a gentleman." 



This was said on English soil, but it applies as well here. Much 

 of this perverted feeling, it is to be feared, is due to our public 

 schools, but surely it is much more a result of the vast and 

 sudden fortunes made since the days of our civil war. Those 

 great and sudden fortunes, too often gained by trickery and 

 knavery and spent in selfish luxury, have done much to demoralize 

 our nation. 



But a revulsion is taking place. Absconding knaves cannot be 

 the nation's heroes, and selfish capitalists are looked upon with 

 less of admiring reverence. Work is again becoming respectable. 

 Work is ennobling. Our Lord saith, " My Father worketh hith- 

 erto, and I work." As a nation, we are beginning to realize that 

 the noble faculties given us are meant for use ; and that men and 

 women who labor with their hands, guided by their brains (for it is 

 cultured handcraft that this nation will have) , stand on the same 

 plane of opportunity with the men of learning and the men of 

 money ; for such men and women can be what they will. 



It is just half a centur}' since Mar}' Lyon struggled faithfully 

 and successfully to found a school in this, her State, in the midst 

 of an agricultural country — a school that should give to the 

 daughters of farmers and others advantages in learning which 

 they had not before enjoyed. To make the expenses small the 

 girls were expected to do the house work, under competent super- 

 vision, and many a city father sent his daughter there to obtain a 

 knowledge of house-keeping which she could not, or did not, receive 

 at home. The fame of this " Mount Holyoke Seminary" spread 

 far and wide, and for many years it was a shining light in the 

 midst of darkness. 



Since that day colleges and schools have sprung up all over the 

 land ; and the Temple of Leaining wliieh was pictured on the first 

 page of the old Webster's Spelling Book and which to the childish 



• Herkimer. 



