We profess to make citizens out
of men,--not _citoyens_, but persons educated to question all privileges
asserted by others, and claim all rights belonging to themselves,--the
only way in which the infinitely most important party to the compact
between the governed and governing can avoid being cheated out of the
best rights inherent in human nature, as an experience the world has
seen almost enough of has proved. We are in trouble just now, on account
of a neglected hereditary _melanosis_, as Monsieur Trousseau might call
it. When we recover from the social and political convulsion it has
produced, and eliminate the _materies morbi_,--and both these events are
only matters of time,--perhaps we shall have leisure to breed our own
milliners. If not, there will probably be refugees enough from the Old
World, who have learned the fashions in courts, and will be glad to turn
their knowledge to a profitable use for the benefit of their republican
patronesses in New York and Boston.
We have run away from our subject farther than we intended at starting;
but an essay on legs could hardly avoid the rambling tendency which
naturally belongs to these organs.
* * * * *
PAUL BLECKER.
PART I.
"Which serves life's purpose best,
To enjoy or to renounce?"
A thorough American, who comprehends what America has to do, and means
to help on with it, ought to choose to be born in New England, for the
vitalized brain, finely-chorded nerves, steely self-control,--then to go
West, for more live, muscular passion, succulent manhood, naked-handed
grip of his work.
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