ll talking we find in America, more than in
any other country, an inclination among all classes to leave the
surroundings where they were born and bend their energies to struggling
out of the position in life occupied by their parents. There are not
wanting theorists who hold that this is a quality in a nation, and that
it leads to great results. A proposition open to discussion.

It is doubtless satisfactory to designate first magistrates who have
raised themselves from humble beginnings to that proud position, and
there are times when it is proper to recall such achievements to the
rising generation. But as youth is proverbially over-confident it might
also be well to point out, without danger of discouraging our sanguine
youngsters, that for one who has succeeded, about ten million confident
American youths, full of ambition and lofty aims, have been obliged to
content themselves with being honest men in humble positions, even as
their fathers before them. A sad humiliation, I grant you, for a self-
respecting citizen, to end life just where his father did; often the
case, nevertheless, in this hard world, where so many fine qualities go
unappreciated,--no societies having as yet been formed to seek out "mute,
inglorious Miltons," and ask to crown them!

To descend abruptly from the sublime, to very near the ridiculous,--I had
need last summer of a boy to go with a lady on a trap and help about the
stable. So I applied to a friend's coachman, a hard-working Englishman,
who was delighted to get the place for his nephew--an American-born
boy--the child of a sister, in great need. As the boy's clothes were
hardly presentable, a simple livery was made for him; from that moment he
pined, and finally announced he was going to leave. In answer to my
surprised inquiries, I discovered that a friend of his from the same
tenement-house in which he had lived in New York had appeared in the
village, and sooner than be seen in livery by his play-fellow he
preferred abandoning his good place, the chance of being of aid to his
mother, and learning an honorable way to earn his living. Remonstrances
were in vain; to the wrath of his uncle, he departed. The boy had, at
his school, heard so much about everybody being born equal and every
American being a gentleman by right of inheritance, that he had taken
himself seriously, and despised a position his uncle was proud to hold,
preferring elegant leisure in his native tenement-h