September 18. 
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
443 
Appropriate Employment. —We want employments | 
that shall give room and verge enough for the develop¬ 
ment of individual character. Why need we all run in | 
certain beaten tracks? Why must a young man be ; 
counted respectable only as he follows certain specified 
professions ? Why need he be lawyer, priest, medical 
man, clerk, or gentleman farmer, because his father has 
an income of ten thousand a-year? Why is he counted 
the black sheep of a rich man’s family, who could do 
nothing for his living that his decent friends would have 
him, but insisted on putting on a blouse and entering a 
machine-shop among the lowest hands, in order to learn 
the detail of the business ? Why did his cousin Caroline 
refuse to bow to him in Broadway? The result of all 
this is, that our young men have nearly lost their man¬ 
hood, and for the most part have their lives marked out 
for them, instead of making them the result of individual 
character. A man of great genius cannot be so restrained, 
we know ; but every man should rebel against these 
tyrannies of society, and declare that whether his work 
be hod-carrying or the writing of Iliads, no hand shall 
restrain him from doing what he was born to do, and 
being happy in his work. There is scarce a boy who, 
if he were allowed to follow his impulses in the choice 
of an occupation, but would do something praiseworthy. 
The very fact that we have made the number of pro¬ 
fessions in which a gentleman may engage so small, has ! 
made the remaining occupations in which men are em¬ 
ployed not respectable. We look into the kitchens of j 
Pompeii, and wonder to see pans and skillets, whose 
shape and ornament make them fit for the tables of the j 
gods; we can find no such kitchen utensils in use now. 
But we forget that it is no longer possible for a “ gentle- | 
man” to be a tinman or a brazier. He may learn to 
read inscriptions on Greek vases, but he must not soil 
his hands with potter’s clay. 
The need of such employments as we have alluded to ' 
is chiefly felt, perhaps, by women, who, in many cases, j 
have to live by the work of their own hands, and who j 
have few sorts of business open to them, wdrile even in 
these they receive less pay than men. To do what we 
wall is often difficult, sometimes impossible, but not i 
nearly so often impossible as is thought; yet it must be ; 
that there are undeveloped resources of the kind we have 
mentioned waiting for some one to turn them to account, 
and which a mind bent to the search could not fail 
before long to discover. 
We know a woman living near the sea, who supports 
herself comfortably by gathering the beautiful sea-weeds j 
thrown upon the beaches, and arranging them neatly in 
books; we know of another, who makes a very elegant j 
sort of paper lantern, the prettiest thing in the world 1 
for carrying about the house, and for which the demand ! 
must be great enough to take up all her time; another 
collects the autumn leaves of our woods and preserves 
them in books or portfolios; another procures vases of 
graceful shape from the nearest potter, and decorates 
them with elegant patterns in colour, of her own design. 
There is a man in Massachusetts who paints flowers 
most exquisitely on articles of furniture; and we know 
another in this State who has earned no slight reputa¬ 
tion in making models of every sort of fruit and 
vegetable, his model giving the exact weight, size, colour, 
and appearance of the object, so that his cabinet, the 
result of only a few seasons’ labour, is become a most 
valuable collection; yet lie is a man of property, and 
began this work merely as an amusement. 
These are only a few examples; but we doubt not that 
many more might be supplied of equal value. They 
may seem trifling instances, but the subject is not con¬ 
fined to such narrow limits. Every handicraft, every 
trade, can bo made a Fine Art—ought to bo made so; 
and until it is, to labour in it will be a curse and no 
blessing. I know of a tea-merchant, who thought so 
well of his business that he had one of our best sculptors 
make him a statue of a Chinese boy to ornament his 
shop, and when you went there to buy tea, you felt that 
you were going upon no mean errand, and to a garden 
rather than a market. You heard there all that you 
would know of tea and China; the details of the business 
became song and picture, and the very muse of trade 
seemed to stand behind the counter. 
Every occupation ought to spring from an individual 
character, and represent it. Instead of taking what is 
given us, we should work only in that field to which we 
are drawn. And only when we resolve to do so, shall 
wo find that there is a field for every man to work in 
where he of right belongs, and where alone he can be 
happy in w'orkiug. These occupations of which we have 
been speaking are the lesser of the Fine Arts, it is true ; 
but nothing can come of their culture but grace and 
goodness and peaceful hours. As such we commend 
them to our readers .—New York Independent. 
AUTUMN SEEDS AND SEEDLINGS. 
The gardener feels the change of the seasons sooner 
than the farmer, or any one else besides, and the 
change of this particular season of the year is more 
manifest to him than that of spring, or summer, or winter; 
the glass may be high, night and day, the days may be 
bright and balmy, yet every week in the autumn makes 
his seeds and cuttings more lazy to move, or root, or 
grow up or down. That degree of heat which in 
the spring brings everything to life, has little effect now 
to keep life a-going, and it is hard to say whether fine 
harvest weather or blustering winds and rains are 
better for seeds and seedlings which are sown and 
reared at this season. About cuttings, there is no 
difficulty about knowing that the finer the weather the 
better for them. We seldom have had a better season 
for cuttings of all bedding-plants than the present, 
and those who put them in in the open ground never 
had a better strike, as far as I can see and hear; but 
the surface of the ground has been so long hot and dry 
after the autumnal seeds were sown, that many of 
them will not see daylight till the winter is over. 
1 have ripened several kinds of seeds this summer, 
and sowed some of each six weeks ago, but I have very 
few seedlings to show for my pains; and if I had 
purchased the seeds from any of the great seed-houses, 
it is as likely as not that I should have some misgivings 
about the ago and soundness of the samples. Now, 
after seeing so many seed-times and harvest-times, if 
such thoughts could find a vent from such a head as 
mine ought to be, how will the question stand with the 
gay and giddy heads? Yea, with the sober and common- 
sense heads of little experience in tho matter? Why, 
each and all of them will blame the seedsman in such 
a season as this; but let us have fair play on both 
sides. No one is harder, on blameable points, either in 
or out-of-doors, in the nursery, than your humble 
servant; but if you bought twelve or twenty packets of 
seeds upon my late recommendations, and now find how 
few of them have come up, be reconciled by my tale, 
for you are not alone in your disappointment, and 
better seeds than mine were never weighed; still, I am 
very short of plants; but I have no fear, however, 
about every seed coming up some day or other, and I 
shall treat tho seed-beds under that belief till the end of 
February. If I had known that we were to have such 
splendid harvest weather all through, I should have 
advised the sccd-beds to be daily watered until the 
seeds were all up; and yet that is a dangerous practice so 
early in the autumn; for the moment you get a seed 
into leaf by forced waterings, you must water it till the 
first rain, however long that may be; whereas, seedlings 
