516 
A WORD TO CHEMISTS* APPRENTICES. 
ing two-fourths continue in the trade when their term of apprenticeship has 
expired . But why ? I ask. Is it because round pharmacy cluster their warmest 
sympathies and their most ennobling aspirations? Is it because hence they 
derive some of their highest and most lasting pleasures ? Is it ? I trow not. 
Is it not rather (and while I acknowledge the fact I mourn over it),—is it not 
rather, I say, because they are obliged so to do? They must either continue 
their connection with the trade or they must starve. Two evils are before them, 
and, coming to the conclusion that on the whole the continuance in the trade is 
preferable to starvation, they choose the smaller evil. Fain would they leave 
the drug counter; they would be almost ready to worship one who would offer 
them a situation in some other department of labour ; but no such offer comes 
and so they resolve to make the best of a bad job, and, with a sigh, they enter 
on the life-long routine of slavery and monotony. 
Is such a state of things at all explainable ? I think it is. A chemist adver¬ 
tises that he is u open to receive a well-educated and respectable youth ” as an 
apprentice. Paterfamilias, who has such a son, sees the advertisement, and as 
ne imagines that the trade of a chemist and druggist is so essentially “ nice 
clean, and respectable,” he resolves his son shall enter the drug business. Pater¬ 
familias and the chemist having agreed upon the terms, the youngster enters his 
apprenticeship. Bright hopes light up the horizon, and enthusiastic anticipa¬ 
tions beam along the vista that stretches before his mental sight; but, alas ! all 
his bright hopes are soon dissipated, and his glowing ideas of the cleanliness of 
the trade soon brought to confusion; and rolling out horse-balls, powdering 
blue vitriol, linseed meal, black resin, etc., mixing sheep-dipping composition 
and blacking, together with late hours, soon render him disgusted with his oc¬ 
cupation. Every day increases his dislike and intensifies his disgust, until in 
some cases lie curses the day he was apprenticed. Have I painted this in 
colours too glaring ? Have I, to make the picture more conspicuous and strik- 
mg, diagged in abuses which do not exist, and never have existed 0 I think 
not. 
And more. Because, the apprentice hates the trade, he takes no interest in 
it; because he dislikes it, he does not trouble his head with studying for it • if 
he does know anything, it has been forced upon him by the ordinary run of his 
daily work but he never goes out in search of knowledge. No midnight lamp 
lights up the pages of his Manuals of Botany or Chemistry as he pores over 
t lem ; no early morning sun, as it throws its rays across the sky, surprises him 
at study. u Bother Latin, botany, chemistry, materia medica, and everything 
else, lie says, when you speak to him on the subject. And so it goes on ; the 
apprentice becomes an assistant, and then the assistant sets up in business for 
lnmself, and then an opportunity is afforded to some scandal-monger to stamp 
t le general body of chemists and druggists as ignorant and incompetent char- 
latans. 
Now where are we to look for the remedy for this state of things? Glad am 
I to state that such a remedy does exist, and that it is within the reach of everv 
one who possesses all his faculties. 
I he desideratum obviously is this : if we can only get to take an interest in 
our trade, the thing is achieved immediately. A man is always enthusiastic in 
any cause which he really loves ; and so we shall only become studious and con¬ 
tented when we begin to like the trade. 
llow, then may the interest be created ? It may be accepted as an axiom of 
universal application, that an individual, in order to proficiency in any branch 
oi study or labour must place before himself some particular object for which 
le must strive. All the great men who have turned the world upside down, 
who have won for themselves positions of power, affluence, and honour, have 
so done because they have set some object before them, and they have striven, 
