rection and degree. Thus, the blacksmith becomes brawny, square, and
sturdy, and the characteristic swing of his arm gives tone to his whole
bearing: the silversmith acquires a peering, cunning look, as if he were
always examining delicate machinery: the physician becomes solemn,
stately, pompous, and mysterious, and speaks like "Sir Oracle," as if he
were eternally administering a bread-pill, or enjoining a regimen of
drugs and starvation: the lawyer assumes a keen, alert, suspicious
manner, as if he were constantly in pursuit of a latent perjury, or
feared that his adversary might discover a flaw in his "case:" and so
on, throughout the catalogue of human avocations. But, among all these,
that which marks its votaries most clearly, is school-teaching.

There seems to be a sort of antagonism between this employment and all
manner of neatness, and the circle of the schoolmaster's female
acquaintance never included the Graces. Attention to personal decoration
is usually, though not universally, in an inverse ratio to mental
garniture; and an artistically-tied cravat seems inconsistent with the
supposition of a well-stored head above it. A mind which is directed
toward the evolution of its own powers, has but little time to waste in
adorning the body; and a fashionable costume would appear to cramp the
intellect, as did the iron-vessel the genius of the Arabian tale.
Although, therefore, there are numerous exceptions--persons whose
externals are as elegant as their pursuits are intellectual--men of
assiduously-cultivated minds are apt to be careless of appearances, and
the principle applies, with especial force, to those whose business it
is to develop the minds of others.

Nor was the schoolmaster of early days in the west, an exception to the
rule. He might not be as learned, nor as purely intellectual, as some of
our modern college-professors, but he was as ungraceful, and as
awkwardly clad, as the most slovenly of them all. Indeed, he came of a
stock which has never been noted for any of the lighter accomplishments,
or "carnal graces;" for at no period of its eventful history, has the
puritan type been a remarkable elegant one. The men so named have been
better known for bravery than taste, for zeal than polish; and since
there is always a correspondence between habits of thought and feeling
and the external appearance, the _physique_ of the race is more
remarkable for rigor of muscle and angularity of outline, than f