es, with a few rapid
lines, would present a sketch of the article, so clear that any one
could recognize it at a glance. It could be seen at once, also, whether
the intention of his employer had been rightly conceived, and whether it
was practicable. The consequence was, that so long as Michael was
employed, there was no more waste of materials and time, to say nothing
of the vexation of continued failures. Michael was not really more
skilful as a carpenter than the many others who had preceded him. But
his knowledge of drawing, gained in a common school in his native
country, made his services worth from fifty cents to a dollar a day more
than those of any other workman in the shop, and he actually received
two dollars a day, when others in the same shop were receiving only a
dollar and a quarter. He was always in demand, and he always received
extra wages, and his work even at that rate was considered cheap.

What was true of Michael in carpentry, would be true of any other
department of mechanical industry. In cabinet-making, in shoe-making, in
tailoring, in masonry, in upholstery, in the various contrivances of tin
and sheet iron with which our houses are made comfortable, in
gas-fitting and plumbing, in the thousand-and-one necessities of the
farm, the garden, and the kitchen, a workman who is ready and expert
with his pencil, who has learned to put his own ideas, or those of
another, rapidly on paper, is worth fifty per cent. more than his
fellows who have not this skill.

The example of this man was brought vividly to my mind at a later day,
in Philadelphia, when an important educational question was under
discussion. Rembrandt Peale had two dreams, each worthy of his genius.
One was to paint a Washington which should go down to posterity; the
other was so to simplify the elements of the art of drawing that young
boys and girls might learn it as universally as they learn to read and
write. He spent long years in maturing a little work for this purpose,
no bigger than a primer or a spelling-book, and a determined effort was
made on the part of some of the friends of popular education to
introduce the study into the primary public schools of Philadelphia. It
was introduced into the High Schools. But its benefits were limited to a
comparatively small number. The hope and the aim of the friends of Mr.
Peale's project were to make the study an elementary one--to make a
certain amount of proficiency in drawing a test