In the great cities of America—in such centres as Chicago and New York—the men who make the most show of wealth, who live in the finest houses, drive the best horses, give the grandest parties, were many of them grooms, coachmen, hotel porters, boot-blacks, news-boys, printers’ devils, porters, and coal-heavers, who have risen from the lower walks of life, and who left their respective homes, a few years ago, with all their worldly wealth in the crown of their hat, or tied up in a pocket-handkerchief. They did the hard work of the office, swept out the stores, made the fires, used the marking-pot, were kicked and cuffed about, and suffered every hardship. The men who made New York what it was were men of the old school; they were celebrated for their courtesy and integrity; they came from the humblest walks of life—from the plough and anvil, from the lapstone and printing-case, from the farm and quarry. They worked their way up, as Daniel worked his, from the position of a slave to Prime Minister of Babylon. Some of them went from their stores to compete with the ablest statesmen in the world; they were the fathers and founders of the American nation. These old schoolmen ate not a bit of idle bread; they were content with their small store and pine-desk; they owned their own goods, and were their own cashiers, salesmen, clerks, and porters; they worked sixteen hours a day, and so became millionaires. They would as soon have committed forgery as be mean and unjust in trade; they made their wealth in business, and not in fraudulent failures; they secured their fortunes out of their customers, and not out of their creditors.—Not so, Young America! An American writer says:—“He must make a dash. He begins with a brown-stone store, filled with goods, for which he has paid nothing; marries a dashing _belle_; delegates all the business that he can to others; lives in style, and spends his money before he gets it; keeps his fast horse, and other appendages equally fast; is much at the club-room, and in billiard or kindred saloons; speaks of his father as ‘the old governor,’ and of his mother as ‘the old woman;’ and, finally, becomes porter to his clerk, and lackey to his salesman. Beginning where his father left off, he leaves off where his father began.”