INDUSTRY.--Let me say a word in behalf of this home-spun virtue. It may seem superfluous, perhaps impertinent, to enforce industry upon the hardest-working people in the world, as I conceive our good countrymen to be; but I speak of it as a part of education--as a principle to be inculcated upon childhood. Its proper limits I shall hereafter attempt to define. In this country it is the duty of every individual to live an active life. No one, even though he be rich, has a right to be idle or useless. In the hive of bees there is a privileged class of drones; but there the government is despotic, with a queen at its head. Ours is a republican government, which admits of no drones, and tolerates no aristocratic indolence. Nor is industry more a duty to society than a source of individual happiness. There are no pleasures so sweet as those earned by effort, no possessions so dear as those acquired by toil. The truth is, that the main happiness of life consists in the vigorous exercise of those faculties which God has given us. Thus it usually happens that more enjoyment is found in the acquisition of property than in its possession. How often does the rich man, surrounded with every luxury, look back from the pinnacle which he has attained, with fond regret, to those days of humble but happy toil when he was struggling up the steep ascent of fortune! Make industry, then, a part of fireside education. Teach it to your children as a point of duty; render it familiar to them by practice. Personal exertion and ready activity are natural to some children, and these hardly need any stimulus to the performance of duties requiring bodily exertion. There are others who have an indolence, a reluctance to move, either uniform or periodical, in their very constitution. If neglected, these children will grow up in the habit of omitting many duties, or of performing only those which are agreeable. It is indispensable that such should be trained to patient exertion, habituated to the performance of every duty in the right time and the right way, even though it may require self-denial and onerous toil. A person who cannot compel himself, from a mere sense of duty, to overcome a slothful reluctance to do what is disagreeable, is but half educated, and carries about him a weakness that is likely to prove fatal to his success in life. Such a person may act vigorously by fits and starts as he may be occasionally urged by impulse; but the good begun will often remain unfinished, and, from subsequent negligence, will result in final disaster. The only safe way is to found industry upon principle, and establish it by habit. While, therefore, I would inculcate industry, I would remark that it may be carried to excess. Every virtue has its bordering vice. The extreme of courage touches upon the precincts of rashness, and a step beyond the proper limit of industry brings you into the dreary regions of avarice.--_Fireside Education, by S. G. Goodrich, an American Author._