542 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



desired grace, niceness and delicacy of personal appearance. 

 There are many young men who have feminine propensities. 

 They have that inclination for the pretty, ornamental, and 

 showy in person and dress, which nature intended should be 

 the exclusive property of the other sex. They interfere with 

 the female prerogatives, as much as some of those whose do- 

 main they invade, do in their aspirations after a more gentle- 

 manly appearance. Since the ladies have begun to wear work- 

 ing jackets and pantaloons, and have exchanged the bonnet for 

 the hat, I am greatly in hopes, as the only advantage which 

 is likely to grow out of such a metamorphosis, that those 

 young men who have such pretty tastes will permit them to 

 take a more rational direction, and that in their endeavors to 

 imitate the ladies, they will become as manly as they are. 



Agricultural labor has not, in the view of some, the requisite 

 dignity and rank to satisfy their ambition. The fact that the 

 mere practical operations of farming demand so little training 

 and skill to conduct them, places the occupation in a lower 

 grade than the arts which require long apprenticeship, and 

 much tuition to practise them with the necessary degree of 

 success and profit. The skill associated with the exercise of 

 the craft gives it higher association and a loftier position. 

 When, as in some mechanical employments, you have great 

 expenditure in preparation, fine and costly material, extreme 

 nicety of workmanship, and rich and valuable products destined 

 for ornament and elegant use, you see an employment which 

 presents much higher attractions to those who are actuated by 

 aspiring views, than belong to the more simple and rural exer- 

 cises. The young man who enters upon such a line of life, 

 feels himself above the rustic laborer ; as much superior in 

 some of the finer attributes of humanity, to him who delves in 

 the ground, as the instruments with which he works, surpass 

 in their exquisite and delicate structure, the heavy plough ; 

 and the gold and silver which are wrought into forms of con- 

 venience and beauty by his hand, exceed the coarse earth be- 

 neath his feet. 



There is no country on the earth where this ambition to 

 rise to higher grades in life, real or imaginary, is more strong 



