That the loafer is a meritorious personage, one fact alone should be sufficient to satisfy the most doubting: he is always emphatically a “self-made” man. By carefully studying excellent examples, which have been increasing ever since the world began, and to which we are promised many more bright additions, he seldom fails to attain a great degree of perfection. Unfortunately, our civilization prevents him from securing that renown to which he is fully able to establish a just claim, and which had generally been freely granted to his first predecessors. Should he presume to live, as it is reported of our primitive ancestors, upon husks and acorns, we would quickly pronounce him a madman, if for no other reason than because this would demonstrate that he differed from us in taste, or was blessed with a better organ of digestion! Should he diet upon raw beef, employ his naked fingers and the hollow of his hand in preference to the many table articles invented for our convenience, and now constantly used, we would soon think it an act of charity to confine him in some lunatic asylum, instead of immortalizing him as a philosopher! Civilization, so much admired for the many comforts it has brought with it, has thus resulted much more to his injury than benefit. If the dial of time was set back some two or three thousand years, he is perhaps the only one who would not lose by the change. In truth, civilization and enlightenment, though he does not deny that they have greatly benefitted others, are his most formidable enemies. It will therefore be seen how unreasonable and ungenerous are those who condemn him for doing nothing to advance either. These elements of modern society have been the great cause of inducing many to doubt his usefulness, whilst they have even impelled some seriously to question the necessity of his existence. In proof of this, I may here state, that I once had a very inquisitive and philosophic friend, now for several years gathered to his fathers, whose death, it is said, was occasioned by too close mental application in efforts to ascertain the usefulness and necessity of a well-known micher, who was constantly to be seen at the village tavern. Such, I have been assured, was the precise statement of his physician, who likewise added, that he might perhaps have survived, but for the many perplexing difficulties suggested to his mind by the old command of the apostle, “that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” This entire statement, however, was much questioned; but then, those who doubted it, invariably remarked that the doctor, having so well doctored my friend that he quickly died, had less regard for the truth than solicitude for his professional skill. This involves the whole matter in uncertainty, where I must leave it, not because I belong to the school of the Pyrrhonists, those lying doubters of old, but simply because the subject is too intricate, and