odge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees;
and, for half the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole
country being under water? But, on the other hand, show us the human
being, of any period or climate, without his Tools: those very
Caledonians, as we saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as
no brute has or can have.

'Man is a Tool-using Animal,' concludes Teufelsdroeckh in his abrupt
way; 'of which truth Clothes are but one example: and surely if we
consider the interval between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by
man, and those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of
Commons, we shall note what progress he has made. He digs up certain
black stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, _Transport
me and this luggage at the rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour_; and
they do it: he collects, apparently by lot, six-hundred and
fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to them, _Make this
nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and sorrow and sin for us_;
and they do it.'

CHAPTER VI

APRONS

One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume is that on
_Aprons_. What though stout old Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, 'whose
Apron, now indeed hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which
proved successful, is still the royal standard of that country'; what
though John Knox's Daughter, 'who threatened Sovereign Majesty that
she would catch her husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should
lie and be a bishop'; what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many
other Apron worthies,--figure here? An idle wire-drawing spirit,
sometimes even a tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire,
is too clearly discernible. What, for example, are we to make of such
sentences as the following?

'Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to
modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk (as
it were, the Emblem and beatified Ghost of an Apron), which some
highest-bred housewife, sitting at Nuernberg Workboxes and Toyboxes,
has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him
with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his
trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise
half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace,--is there
not range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How much
has been concealed, how much has been defended in Apr