and blood was considered guilty of taking the bread from the thrice fifty mouths that depended on those hands’ labor, and was not unfrequently visited with the punishment due to such guilt.  No demonstrated fruitlessness of similar fears in the past served to allay fears for the future; no inefficiency of brute force permanently to stay the enterprise of the mind prevented brute force from making its futile and sometimes fatal attempts.  It is no matter that increased facility of production has been attended by an increased demand for the product; it is no matter that ingenuity has never been held permanently back from its carefully conned plans; there have not been wanting men, numerous, ignorant, and ignoble enough to collect in mobs, raze workshops, destroy machinery, chase away inventors, and fancy, that, so employed, they have been engaged in the work of self-protection.

It is such indirect lessons as may be learned from these and other statements that give this book its chief value.  The interesting historical and mechanical information contained in its pages makes it indeed well worthy of perusal; yet for that alone we should not take especial pains to set it before the people.  But its incidental teachings ought to be taken to heart by every man, and especially every mechanic, who has any ambition or conscience beyond the exigencies of bread and butter.  Lack of ambition is not an American fault, but it is too often an ambition that regards irrelevant and factitious honors rather than those to which it may legitimately and laudably aspire.  A mechanic should find in the excellence of his mechanism a greater reward and satisfaction than in the wearing of a badge of office which any fifth-rate lawyer or broken-down man-of-business with influential “friends” may obtain, and whose petty duties they may discharge quite as well as the first-rate mechanic.  The mechanic who is master of his calling need yield to none.  We would not have him like the ironmongers denounced by the old religious writer as “heathenish in their manners, puffed up with pride, and inflated with worldly prosperity”; but we would have him mindful of his true dignity.  In the importance of the results which he achieves, in the magnitude of the honors he may win, in the genius he may employ and the skill he may attain, no profession or occupation presents a more inviting field than his; but it will yield fruits only to the good husbandman.  Science and art give up their treasures only to him who is capable of enthusiasm and devotion.  He alone who magnifies his office makes it honorable.  Whether he work in marble, canvas, or iron, the man who is content simply to follow his occupation, and is not possessed by it, may be an artificer, but will not be an artist, nor ever wear the laurel on his brow.  He should be so enamored of his calling as to court it for its own charms.  Invention is a capricious mistress, and does not always bestow her favors on the most worthy.  Men not a few have died in poverty,