THE WONDEES OF THE SHORE. 51 



computers and competitors, but never the originators 

 of daring scliemes, men able and willing to go forth 

 to replenish the earth and subdue it. And in the 

 hours of relaxation, how much of their time is 

 thrown away, for want of anything better, on fri- 

 volity, not to say on secret profligacy, parents know 

 too well ; and often shut their eyes in very despair 

 to evils which they know not how to cure. A 

 frightful majority of our middle-class young men 

 are growing up effeminate, empty of all knowledge 

 but what tends directly to the making of a fortune ; 

 or rather, to speak correctly, to the keeping up the 

 fortunes which their fathers have made for them ; 

 while of the minority, who are indeed thinkers and 

 readers, how many women as well as men have w^e 

 seen wearying thek souls with study undu-ected, 

 often misdirected ; craving to learn, yet not knowing 

 how or what to learn ; cultivating, with unwhole- 

 some energy, the head at the expense of the body 

 and the heart ; catching up with the most capricious 

 self-will one mania after another, and tossing it 

 away again for some new phantom ; gorging the 

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