PUBLIC LIBRARY

152803

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS. 1899

ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, by WILLIAM S. MARTIEN, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

III. The Working-man's Garden and Grounds....

19

IV. Husband and Wife.......

V. The Wife at Home..

VI. The Working-man's Daughter..

VII. The Schoolmaster........

VIII. The Schoolmaster, continued.

IX. Early Reading.....

X. Reading for Beginners...

XI. Reading for Entertainment..

XII. The Working-man in search of Knowledge.. 71

XIII. Study by Stealth..

27

32

......

......

38

45

50

.....

55

60

.....

65

.....

78

XIV. The Art of Drawing valuable to Mechanics..

85

Page

XXII. The Working-man in a strange land.... 135

XXIII. Advantages of American Working-men. 139

XXIV. The Village Talker....

144

215

XXXVI. Home Pleasures....

.........

224

XXXV. Who is the Working-man?............

XXXVII. The Working-man's Evenings at Home. 233

XXXVIII. The Working-man in the Country...... 238

XXXIX. The Working-man's Saturday Evening. 243

XL. The Unstable Working-man....

XLI. The Working-man's good Works.

XLII. The Working-man's Rest

249

T

.....

258

enjoy

264

and m

"De

Is s

The

is no suc

XLIII. The Working-man retired from Business 270

XLIV. The Working-man in old Age......... 275

XLV. Conclusion..

284

there is

THE

WORKING-MAN.

I..

THE WORKING-MAN'S HOME.

"Tell me on what holy ground
May domestic peace be found?
Halcyon daughter of the skies,
Far on fearful wings she flies
From the pomp of sceptred state,
From the rebel's noisy hate."

COLERIDGE.

THERE is a peculiar zest in the working-man's enjoyment of home. After weariness both of body and mind, he has a refuge at the close of the day

"Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of home Is sweetest.'

There are languages, it is said, in which there is no such word as Home: in our mother tongue there is none more pregnant. It marks the sacred spot to which the cares and tumult of the world

* Coleridge.

9

do not reach; and where, except in cases of extreme depravity, its vices do not intrude. If there are gentle affections in the heart, they will break forth around the hearthstone; if there is an hour of tranquillity amidst perturbed life, it will be that which is spent with wife and children; if there is such a thing as friendship or love, it will be developed among these dearest associates.

Homeless men are seldom happy. If it was not good for man to be alone, even in Eden, it is bad indeed to be alone in such a fallen world as ours. But I will go farther, and assert the moral influences of domestic institutions. As it regards public offences, the man who has a wife and children has by just so much a greater stake in society. He has much both to gain and to lose. He cannot rise or fall alone. As it regards private virtue, it depends much on the kindly affections, and these are in their very shrine in the family circle. I think I have observed that when a man begins to go astray, he becomes less fond of home. The quiet look of the wife speaks daggers to his guilty conscience. The caresses of children are so many reproaches to the man who knows that he is wasting their very livelihood by his habits of dissipation. I think I have observed that the most rude and quarrelsome men are orderly and quiet when they go abroad with their wives and child ren. Such is the safeguard of virtue which is fur nished by the influences of home.