ECONOMY. 
57 
at the Institute in the mean while, and had received a 
Rogers’ penknife from his father ? Which would be 
most likely to cut his fingers ? ... To my astonishment 
I was informed on leaving college that I had studied 
navigation! — why, if I had taken one turn down the 
harbor I should have known more about it. Even the 
poor student studies and is taught only political econo¬ 
my, while that economy of living which is synonymous 
with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our 
colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading 
Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in 
debt irretrievably. 
As with our colleges, so with a hundred “ modern im¬ 
provements ; ” there is an illusion about them; there is 
not always a positive advance. The devil goes on ex¬ 
acting compound interest to the last for his early share 
and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our 
inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our 
attention from serious things. They are but improved 
means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already 
but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston 
or New York. We are in great haste to construct a 
magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine 
and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to com¬ 
municate. Either is in such a predicament as the man 
who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished 
deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of 
her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to 
say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to 
talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the At¬ 
lantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to 
the new; but perchance the first news that will leak 
through into the broad, flapping American ear will be 
