speed add wings,
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue
Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart,
Strange horrors seize thee and pangs unfelt before."

Faithfully yours,

[Illustration: (signature) John Jay, esq.]

The Dishonor of Labor.

The fundamental, essential cause of slavery and its concomitants,
ignorance, degradation and suffering on the one side, as of idleness,
prodigality and luxury-born disease on the other, is a false idea of
the nature and offices of Labor.

Labor is not truly a curse, as has too long been asserted. It only
becomes such through human perverseness, misconception and sin. It was
no curse to the first pair in Eden, and will not be to their
descendants, whenever and wherever the spirit of Eden shall pervade
them. It is only a curse because too many seek to engross the product
of others' work, yet do little or none themselves. If the secret were
but out, _that no man can really enjoy more than his own moderate
daily labor would produce_, and _none can truly enjoy this without
doing the work_, the death-knell of Slavery in general--in its
subtler as well as its grosser forms--would be rung. Until that truth
shall be thoroughly diffused, the cunning and strong will be able to
prey upon the simple and feeble, whether the latter be called slaves
or something else.

[Illustration: Horace Greeley. (Engraved by J. C. Buttre.)]

The great reform required is not a work of hours nor of days, but of
many years. It must first pervade our literature, and thence our
current ideas and conversation, before it can be infused into the
common life. Meanwhile, it would be well to remember that--

Every man who exchanges business for idleness, not because he has
become too old or infirm to work, but because he has become rich
enough to live without work;

Every man who educates his son for a profession, rather than a
mechanical or agricultural calling, not because of that son's supposed
fitness for the former rather than the latter, but because he imagines
Law, Physic or Preaching, a more respectable, genteel vocation, than
building houses or growing grain;

Every maiden who prefers in marriage a rich suitor of doubtful morals
or scanty brains to a poor one, of sound principles, blameless life,
good information and sound sense; Every mother who is pleased when
her daughter receives marked attention from a rich lawyer or merchant,
but frowns on the addresses of a y