our own or
foreign governments, however amusing it may be to him or them, I prefer
to finish my education at a different school.

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in
danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as
a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her
time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a
town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!

Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed to employ them in
throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that
they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.
For instance: just after sunrise, one summer morning, I noticed one of
my neighbors walking beside his team, which was slowly drawing a heavy
hewn stone swung under the axle, surrounded by an atmosphere of
industry,--his day's work begun,--his brow commenced to sweat,--a
reproach to all sluggards and idlers,--pausing abreast the shoulders of
his oxen, and half turning round with a flourish of his merciful whip,
while they gained their length on him. And I thought, Such is the labor
which the American Congress exists to protect,--honest, manly
toil,--honest as the day is long,--that makes his bread taste sweet, and
keeps society sweet,--which all men respect and have consecrated: one of
the sacred band, doing the needful, but irksome drudgery. Indeed, I felt
a slight reproach, because I observed this from the window, and was not
abroad and stirring about a similar business. The day went by, and at
evening I passed the yard of another neighbor, who keeps many servants,
and spends much money foolishly, while he adds nothing to the common
stock, and there I saw the stone of the morning lying beside a whimsical
structure intended to adorn this Lord Timothy Dexter's premises, and the
dignity forthwith departed from the teamster's labor, in my eyes. In my
opinion, the sun was made to light worthier toil than this. I may add,
that his employer has since run off, in debt to a good part of the town,
and, after passing through Chancery, has settled somewhere else, there
to become once more a patron of the arts.

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead
downward. To have done anything by which you earned money _merely_ is to
have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the
wages which his employer pays him, he i