miscellaneous addresses. 
235 
step in this direction, I should be glad to see established, in direct 
connection with our schools, a system of workshops for the prac¬ 
tical instruction of young machinists, engineers, etc. 
The idea appears to be prevalent now-a-days that the main 
object of an education is to enable one to obtain his living by his 
wits. Yet we hear not a little from the stump and elsewhere, 
every year (generally just before election), about “the dignity of 
labor, the enviable position and honorable character of the labor¬ 
ing man,” etc., and, if this is really the general opinion, why is it 
that we see so many young men trying to escape from their for¬ 
tunate fate, giving us in their struggles such a multitude of third- 
rate lawyers, indifferent preachers, death-dealing doctors, or poor 
politicians. 
It is not because such men shrink from physical employment, 
because you may see them trudge all day behind a dog, with gun 
on shoulder, wading swamps and crossing morasses for the proud 
satisfaction of bagging a poor woodcock or snipe ; but if one was 
required to exert himself to the same extent in any useful labor, 
he might argue against it in the same manner as a young man I 
once knew, whose father having refused to “ come down ” as lib¬ 
erally as the youth deemed essential — the latter declared he 
would go off and learn the carpenter’s trade and disgrace the 
family. 
I am afraid that a considerable proportion of the superfluous 
talk we hear now-a-days concerning the “dignity of labor”—“ our 
sturdy yeomanry,” etc., etc., comes from a class of men with 
whom it is generally easier to preach than to practice, and whose 
great anxiety is to escape from that which they so strongly recom¬ 
mend to others, upon the same principle which led Artemus Ward 
to insist upon a vigorous prosecution of the war to the last drop 
of blood of his wife's able-bodied relations! 
Fortunately, the measure of success which such persons meet 
with is insufficient, in most cases, to render their example a very 
dangerous or contagious one, as a few years suffices to leave them 
far behind in the contest for the many good things the world has 
to offer; for in life it is pretty much the same old story in all 
kinds of competition—the prizes are won by those who “ stitch ” 
and strive, rather than by those who shirk, and are ashamed of 
