AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 2T 



with new periscopic spectacles, investigating the mysteries of a 

 knitting machine. In the corner, 'Tom' is reading, as a thing of 

 the past, Thomas Hood's Song of the Shirt ! Not far off, a daugh- 

 ter forces him to acknowledge, in her quiet delight, that since the 

 United States government have taken up the proper cudgels of 

 morality, no home is complete without the stereoscope ! Wifely 

 whispers are heard concerning incredible discoveries in the out- 

 skirts of fashion, amid crinoline labyrinths, or asking for the new 

 slate globes and the patent orrery for the school room ! 



But, hark ! the dinner bell ; not that Fejee tomtom of the last 

 century, but one like 'lovers' tongues at night, silver sweet.' It 

 summons the household to a meal whose aroma of food is caught 

 by patent process over the new range — to a meal where vegetables 

 (can-preserved) mock the season — to a board where India-rubber 

 knife handles and gutta-percha napkin rings defy their juvenile 

 owner's habits of slovenliness — to the buffet where Yankee or 

 western wine is to be drank from bottles corked by machinery — 

 to a meal where the flies, still buzzing in the temperate zone of 

 the dining-room, enter, one by one, the basket of the clock-work 

 guillotine on the mantel. 



When the meal is finished, he retires to a game of billiards on 

 a Yankee table, with the new billiard register presiding over pa- 

 tent cues and maces. 



Taking a last look before bed-time at the favorite pantry, no 

 more inhabited by the house-beetles that once poured forth like 

 an army of household Goths and hearthstone Huns, to Vandalize 

 the larder, he places on the doors the burglar guard and examines 

 his patent pistol. Soon, on an elliptic or hydrostatic mattrass, 

 beneath a flexible canopy, in a bedstead scrolled by machinery 

 and carved by steam, he falls asleep to awaken again to some new 

 daily wonder ! 



Every invention in this catalogue of daily life has sought, within 

 some one of the thirty-one years past, the hospitality of an American 

 Institute Fair; however naked, has been by its auspices clothed; 

 and, however a stranger, has been there naturalized into popu- 

 larity ! 



III. At a very early era nations discovered that emulation was 

 the spur of industry. But especially is it true in this age of the 

 working and thinking man, as distinguished from previous ages of 

 the fighting and unreasoning man. Wherever there is an exhibi- 

 tion of the products of industry, it becomes the apotheosis of the 

 intelligent laborer. This emulation, and that healthy stimulus, 



