the moral and healthful amenities which help to form a 

 true gentleman? A trained and educated mechanic will 

 rather spend his evenings and holidays in edifying read- 

 ing or in good social recreations, than in frequenting bar- 

 rooms or loafing in the street. He will want his home 

 life pleasant and cheerful, will take due care of his own 

 health and that of his children, will not treat his wife as a 

 slave or servant, and his children as brats, will seek for 

 companions equal to himself, in fact will be more of a man 

 and less of a brute, by reason of that mental trainins' 

 which is his best preparation for life's duties. 



"The relationship between ignorance and vice is patent 

 to all men, but just where the connection lies is one of 

 the most difficult of social problems. No man can be 

 classed with the ignorant who knows any one branch of 

 useful knowledge well and thoroughly. Science is tend- 

 ing to specialties, and art to technicalities. In all trades, 

 business and professions, a man without some definite, 

 practical knowledge, uow-a-days, is to all intents and pur- 

 poses ignorant, unless his intelligence has been so cultiva- 

 ted that he is ready to learn whatever is current. The day 

 of Jacks of all trades who are masters of none is gone by 

 in the rush of human progress. Mechanics who have 

 "picked up" their trades are set to tending machines. 

 English lords and baronets are seriously betaking them- 

 selves to trades, arts and sciences, in sheer dread of find- 

 ing their ocucpation of noblemen gone. As to the pres- 

 ent common school system its grand error lies in assuming 

 that all men have equal capacity, and in undertaking to do 

 for the multitude what it is only possible to do for the few. 

 It is an error which results in filling the heads of the young 

 with a smattering of knowledge, which the philosophers 

 call a bad thing, and with an enormous conceit which is 

 much more dangerous." "Our cities are full of common 

 school graduates who despise manual labor, and scramble 



