d it for you. Any occupation which soils the
hands or the clothes, is looked upon with disfavor by the upper classes. A
broker who never does any thing that is either useful or ornamental, grows
nothing, invents nothing, imagines nothing; who instructs nobody, amuses
nobody, enriches nobody; who leaves the world in the same condition that
he found it, may be called a gentleman, visit in the first circles, have
those mysterious letters, E.S.Q., written after his name, and if he is
rich, will be elected a member of more societies than will be agreeable to
him. But a wig-maker who has invented a new spring for a toupee, or a new
dye for the hair, and thereby really done mankind a service, could no more
get into the first circles with us than he could go to heaven, like
Mahomet, on the back of an ass. Shoemakers' wives and bakers' daughters
are people of whose acquaintance nobody ever speaks boastingly. I once
knew the nephew of a barber who always blushed when his uncle was named in
his hearing. But an attorney's lady, or a banker's daughter, are often
paraded in an ostentatious manner before one by their friends, and I have
never known the nephew of a soldier-officer, whose business is to take
people's lives, blush at the profession of his relative. It cannot be
expected that men will labor in callings that gain them only the contempt
of their neighbors; and therefore while it is accounted disgraceful among
us to do any thing that is useful, we must be content to remain dependent
upon any people who have more sense in regard to this matter than
ourselves.

We are very well aware that shoemakers and pastry-cooks are not the kind
of people who compose the French court; but there can be no denial of the
fact that certain kinds of artisans are treated by the French people with
a greater degree of respect than they are with us. Very different from the
dogged surliness of an Englishman, or the who-cares-for-_you_ manner of
our own countrymen, is the air of conscious self-respect of certain
classes of French tradesmen. In the present condition of our society, we
hold it to be among the impossible things to make a decent pastry-cook out
of an American citizen, or a decent citizen out of a pastry-cook. But is
there any good reason why we should not? Do not pastry-cooks contribute as
much toward human happiness as sugar-refiners or importers of molasses?
Should you not feel as well disposed toward the individual who had made a
merin