gorgeous furniture might have been placed in them, and soft couches and luxurious banquets spread, by hands unseen; and man, clothed with fabrics of nature's weaving, richer than imperial purple, might have been sent to disport himself in these Elysian palaces. 'Fair scene!' I imagine you are saying; 'fortunate for us, had it been the scene ordained for human life!' But where then, tell me, had been human energy, perseverance, patience, virtue, heroism? Cut off with one blow from the world; and mankind had sunk to a crowd, nay, far beneath a crowd of Asiatic voluptuaries. No, it had _not_ been fortunate. Better that the earth be given to man as a dark mass whereon to labor. Better that rude and unsightly materials be provided in the ore-bed and the forest, for him to fashion into splendor and beauty. Better, I say, not because of that splendor and beauty, but because the act creating them is better than the things themselves; because exertion is nobler than enjoyment; because the laborer is greater and more worthy of honor than the idler. I call upon those whom I address, to stand up for that nobility of labor. It is heaven's great ordinance for human improvement. Let not that great ordinance be broken down. What do I say? It is broken down; and it _has been_ broken down for ages. Let it then be built up again; here if any where, on these shores of a new world, of a new civilization. 'But how,' I may be asked, 'is it broken down?' 'Do not men toil?' it may be said. They do indeed toil, but they too generally do it because they must. Many submit to it as, in some sort, a degrading necessity, and they desire nothing so much on earth, as escape from it." * * * "This way of thinking is the heritage of the absurd and unjust feudal system; under which serfs labored, and gentlemen spent their lives in fighting and feasting It is time that this opprobrium of toil were done away. Ashamed to toil, art thou? Ashamed of thy dingy work-shop and dusty labor-field; of thy hard hand, scarred with service more honorable than that of war; of thy soiled and weather-stained garments, on which mother Nature has embroidered, midst sun and rain, midst fire and steam, her own heraldic honors? Ashamed of these tokens and titles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and vanity? It is treason to nature; it is impiety to heaven; it is breaking heaven's great ordinance. TOIL, I repeat--TOIL, either of the brain, of the heart, or of the hand, is the only true manhood, the only true nobility!"