bout bidding farewell
to their companions, with whom they had lived--abating the three or four
pranks that were played off upon Art--on good and friendly terms, and
seeing that they were about to take their departure, he addressed them
as follows:--

"I need not say," he proceeded, "that I regret you are leaving me; which
I do, for, without meaning any disrespect to those present, I am bound
to acknowledge that two better workmen, or two honester young men, were
never in my employment. Art, indeed is unsurpassed, considering his
time, and that he is only closing his apprenticeship: 'tis true, he has
had good opportunities--opportunities which, I am happy to say, he has
never neglected. I am in the habit, as you both know, of addressing
a few words of advice to my young men at the close of their
apprenticeships, and when they are entering upon the world as you are
now. I will therefore lay down a few simple rules for your guidance,
and, perhaps, by following them, you will find yourselves neither the
worse nor the poorer men.

"Let the first principle then of your life, both as mechanics, and men,
be truth--truth in all you think, in all you say, and in all you do; if
this should fail to procure you the approbation of the world, it will
not fail to procure you your own, and, what is better, that of God. Let
your next principle be industry--honest, fair, legitimate industry, to
which you ought to annex punctuality--for industry without
punctuality is but half a virtue. Let your third great principle be
sobriety--strict and undeviating sobriety; a mechanic without sobriety,
so far from being a benefit or an ornament to society, as he ought to
be, is a curse and a disgrace to it; within the limits of sobriety all
the rational enjoyments of life are comprised, and without them are
to be found all those which desolate society with crime, indigence,
sickness, and death. In maintaining sobriety in the world, and
especially among persons of your own class, you will certainly have much
to contend with; remember that firmness of character, when acting upon
right feeling and good sense, will enable you to maintain and work out
every virtuous and laudable purpose which you propose to effect. Do not,
therefore, suffer yourselves to be shamed from sobriety, or, indeed,
from any other moral duty, by the force of ridicule; neither, on the
other hand, must you be seduced into it by flattery, or the transient
gratification of social enj