NAILS.

In most occupations, the profit of the master and the journeyman bear a proportion:  if the former is able to figure in genteel life, the latter is able to figure in silk stockings.  If the matter can afford to allow upon his goods ten per cent. discount for money, the servant can afford to squander half his wages.  In a worn-down trade, where the tides of profit are reduced to a low ebb, and where imprudence sets her foot upon the premises, the matter and the man starve together.  Only half this is our present case.

The art of nail-making is one of the most ancient among us; we may safely charge its antiquity with four figures.

We cannot consider it a trade in, so much as of Birmingham; for we have but few nail-makers left in the town:  our nailers are chiefly masters, and rather opulent.  The manufacturers are so scattered round the country, that we cannot travel far, in any direction, out of the sound of the nail-hammer.  But Birmingham, like a powerful magnet, draws the produce of the anvil to herself.

When I first approached her, from Walsall, in 1741, I was surprized at the prodigious number of blacksmiths shops upon the road; and could not conceive how a country, though populous, could support so many people of the same occupation.  In some of these shops I observed one, or more females, stript of their upper garment, and not overcharged with their lower, wielding the hammer with all the grace of the sex.  The beauties of their face were rather eclipsed by the smut of the anvil; or, in poetical phrase, the tincture of the forge had taken possession of those lips, which might have been taken by the kiss.

Struck with the novelty, I inquired, “Whether the ladies in this country shod horses?” but was answered, with a smile, “They are nailers.”

A fire without heat, a nailer of a fair complexion, or one who despises the tankard, are equally rare among them.  His whole system of faith may be comprised in one article—­That the slender two-penny mug, used in a public house, is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

While the master reaps the harvest of plenty, the workman submits to the scanty gleanings of penury, a thin habit, an early old age, and a figure bending towards the earth.  Plenty comes not near his dwelling, except of rags, and of children.  But few recruits arise from his nail-shop, except for the army.  His hammer is worn into deep hollows, fitting the fingers of a dark and plump hand, hard as the timber it wears.  His face, like the moon, is often seen through a cloud.

BELLOWS.

Man first catches the profession; the profession afterwards moulds the man.

In whatever profession we engage, we assume its character, become a part of it, vindicate its honor, its eminence, its antiquity; or feel a wound through its sides.