YOUNG BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. pursued as a relaxation or relief from other modes of work, is the heaviest possible punishment to the poor galley-slaves who are doomed to it for the term of their natural lives. The great zest of life is change, boy, even as the chief drug of our existence is the mental and bodily fatigue which arises from long continuance at the same pursuit. Recreation, indeed, is merely that restoration of energy which comes from change of work or occupation; and it is this principle of change or variety in labor which, as with the boating of boys, can transform even the hard work of galley-slaves into a matter of child's play." 66 Oh, then, uncle," cried little Benjamin, flushed with the belief that he had made a grand discovery, "why not let people work at a number of different things, and do each for only a little time, instead of setting them to labor always at the same pursuit for the whole of their lives? Every one would be fond of working then." "Yes; but, lad," rejoined the old man, smiling as well at the simplicity as at the aptness of his pupil, "this flighty or erratic kind of labor would be of no more value to the world than are the sports of children. A tailor must continue using the needle for years, Ben, before he can work a button-hole fit to be seen. How long must people have toiled on and on, generation after generation, before they learned how to make windowglass and bottles out of the sand and the weeds by the sea-shore! Could you or I, Ben, ever hope, by laboring half an hour a day, to get a pair of scissors or a razor out of a lump of ironstone, or to fashion a slice of an elephant's tusk into the exquisitely nice symmetry of a billiard ball? For labor to be of special use and value to the world, it must have some special skill; and skilled labor, being but the cunning of the fingers. requires the same long education of the hands as deep learning does of the head. It is because savages and vagabonds have no settled occupations that their lives are comparatively worthless to the rest of mankind." "I see now!" ejaculated the thoughtful boy. "Yes, my lad, variety of occupation makes work as pleasant as play," the uncle added, "but it makes it as valueless also. So now let us turn to the second means of making labor agreeable." "And that's habit, I think you said," interjected the younger Benjamin. "I did," he replied. "Now habit, I should first tell you, my little man, is one of the most wonderful principles in the whole human constitution. The special function of habit is to make that which is at first irksome for us to do, pleasant after a time to perform: it serves to render the actions which originally required an express effort on our part to execute, so purely mechanical, as it were (when they have been frequently and regularly repeated for a certain period), as to need almost the same express effort then to prevent us indulging in them." "How strange!" mused the nephew. "The simple habit of whittling will teach you, lad, how difficult it is for people to keep their hands from doing work they have been long accustomed to. Again, when you were trying to play your father's violin, you remember how hard you found it to move each finger as you wanted, and how your eye was obliged to be fixed first on the music-book and then on the strings, in order to touch each particular note set down, until at length, disgusted with the tedium of the task, you left off practicing on the instrument altogether? And yet, had you pursued the study, there is no doubt you would ultimately have played with all the ease, and even pleasure, of your father, and have got to work your fingers ere long with the same nimbleness, and even the same inattention, as your mother plies her knitting-needles while reading in the evening." "So I should, I dare say; but isn't it odd, uncle, that mere habit should do this?" observed the lad, as he grew alive to the wonders worked by it. "It is odd, my boy-very odd, indeed, that the mere repetition of acts at frequent and regular intervals (for that is all that is required) should make them, however difficult and distasteful at first, grow easy and congenial to us in time; that it should change pain into pleasure, labor into pastime; that it should render a certain set of muscles unconscious of effort, and callous to fatigue, and transform the most arduous voluntary actions into the simplicity and insensibility of mere clock-work. But so it is, my little man; and it is this same principle of habit applied to the different forms of manual labor which constitutes what is termed 'industrial training;' it is this which makes 'skill' in the world, and gives to the handiwork of mechanics a stamp of the cunning and dignity of art." "The use of apprenticeship, then, I suppose," observed the boy, "is to form a kind of habit of working in a particular way-isn't it so, uncle ?" "Well said, my quick little man. There is a high pleasure in teaching such as take delight in learning, like you, Ben." "But, uncle," continued the youth, tingling all over with delight at the applause, "if habit can do away with the unpleasantness of labor, where can be the use of the other thing you spoke of as "It was purpose or object, my lad, that I told you makes work pleasant also." "Oh yes, so it was-purpose or object," young Benjamin repeated; "but I hardly know what you mean by such grand words." 66 They are not only grand words, but they stand for the grandest things in life, my little fellow," the old man went on. "Habit, after all, makes a man work but as a machine. The blacksmith who has been long accustomed to wield the sledge-hammer has no more sense of fatigue (except when he works beyond the time he has been used to) than that wonderful new invention the steam-engine, which you have seen swinging its iron arms about as it pumps the water out of our docks. But a man with a purpose, my son, works like a man, and not like a steam-engine, even though that very purpose makes him as insensible of weariness in his labor as the steam-engine itself." "Does purpose, then, as you call it, do the same as habit, uncle ?" inquired the youth. "Yes, Ben, but it does that immediately which habit requires years to accomplish. Only let a man put his whole soul into what he is doinglet him work, so to speak, lad, with his heart in his hand, and the toil is instantly made a high and grand delight to him. This is the wonderful ef feet of the will, Ben. What you will to do, you must, of course, do willingly, and therefore more or less easily; and labor is especially repulsive when your will wants to be off working at one thing while your hands are constrained to be toiling at another. Those who are without purpose in life, boy, are vagabonds either in body or spirit, for if there be no settled object there can hardly be any settled pursuit. Such people, therefore, fly from this to that occupation, according as the |