KEEP AT WORK.

By G. W. LIGHT.

DOES a mountain on you frown?
Keep at work:

You may undermine it yet;

If you stand and thump its base,

Sorry bruises you may get.
Keep at work.

Does Miss Fortune's face look sour?

Keep at work:

She may smile again some day;
If you pull your hair and fret,
Rest assured she 'll have her way.
Keep at work.

Are you censured by your friends? Keep at work:

Whether they are wrong or right,

May be you must 'bide your time, If for victory you fight.

Keep at work.

If the devil growls at you,
Keep at work:

That's the best way to resist;

If you hold an argument,

You may feel his iron fist.

Keep at work.

Are your talents vilified?

Keep at work:

Greater men than you are hated;

If you're right, then go aheadGrit will be appreciated.

Keep at work.

Every thing is done by Labor:
Keep at work,

If you would improve your station:
They have help from Providence
Who work out their own salvation.
Keep at work.

THE MAN OF EXPEDIENTS.

FROM SAMUEL GILMAN.

THE man of expedients is he who, never providing for the little mishaps and stitch-droppings with which this mortal life is pestered, and too indolent or too ignorant to repair them in the proper way, passes his days in inventing a succession of devices, pretexts, substitutes, plans and commutations, by the help of which he thinks he appears as well as other people.

Thus the man of expedients may be said to only half live; he is the creature of outside — the victim of emergencies whose happiness often depends on the possession of a pin, or the strength of a button-hole.

In his countenance you behold marks of anxiety and contrivance; the natural consequence of his shiftless mode of life. The internal workings of his soul are generally a compound of cunning and the heart-ache. One half of his time he is silent, languid, indolent; the other half he moves, bustles, and exclaims. "What's to be done now?" His whole aim is to live as near as possible to the very verge of propriety. His business is all slightingly performed, and when a transaction is over, he has no confidence in his own effectiveness, but asks, though in a careless manner, "Will it do? Will it do?"

Look through the various professions and characters of life. You will there see men of expedients darting, and shifting, and glancing, like fishes in the stream. If a merchant, the man of expedients borrows incontinently at two per cent a month; if a sailor, he stows his hold with jury-masts, rather than ascertain if his ship be sea-worthy; if a visitor where he dislikes, he is called out before the evening has half expired; if a musician, he scrapes on a fiddle-string of silk; if an actor, he takes his stand within three feet of the prompter; if a poet, he makes fault rhyme with ought, and look with spoke; if a reviewer, he fills up three quarters of his article with extracts from the writer whom he abuses; if a divine, he leaves ample room in every sermon for an exchange of texts; if a physician, he is often seen galloping at full rate, nobody knows where; if a debtor, he has a marvellous acquaintance with short corners and dark alleys; if a printer, he is adroit at scabbarding; if a collegian, he commits Euclid and Locke to memory without understanding them, interlines his Greek, and writes themes equal to the Rambler.

But it is in the character of a general scholar that the man of expedients most shines. He ranges through all the arts and sciences-in cyclopædias. He acquires a most thorough knowledge of classical literature-from translations. He is very extensively read-in title pages. He obtains an exact acquaintance with authors- from reviews. He follows all literature up to its sources - in tables of contents. His researches are indefatigable — into indexes. He quotes memoriter with astonishing facility-the dictionary of Quotations; and his bibliographical familiarity is miraculous — with Dibdin.

We are sorry to say, that our men of expedients are to be sometimes discovered in the region of morality. There are those, who claim the praise of a good action, when they have acted merely from convenience, inclination or

compulsion. There are those, who make a show of industry, when they are set in motion only by avarice. There are those who are quiet and peaceable, only because they are sluggish. There are those who are sagely silent, because they have not one idea; abstemious, from repletion; patriots, because they are ambitious; perfect, because there is no temptation.

Again, let us look at the man of expedients in argument. His element is the sophism. He is at home in a circle. His forte - his glory, is the petitio principii. Often he catches at your words, and not at your ideas. Thus, if you are arguing that light is light, and he happens to be (as it is quite likely he will) on the other side of the question, he snatches at your phraseology, and exclaims, Did you ever weigh it? Sometimes he answers you by silence. Or if he pretends to anything like a show of fair reasoning, he cultivates a certain species of argumentative obliquity that defies the acutest logic. When you think you have him in a corner, he is gone — he has slipped through some hole of an argument, which you hoped was only letting in the light of conviction. In vain. you attempt to fix him- it is putting your finger on a flea.

But let us come down a little lower into life. Who appears so well and so shining at a ball room as the man of expedients? Yet his small-clothes are borrowed, and as for his knee-buckles about as ill-matched as if one had belonged to his hat and the other to a galoche - to prevent their difference being detected, he stands sidewise towards his partner. Nevertheless, the circumstance makes him a more vivacious dancer, since, by the rapidity of his motions, he prevents a too curious examination from the spectators.

Search farther into his dress. very genteelly dangles one glove.

You will find that he
There are five pins

about him, and as many buttons gone, or button-holes broken. His pocket-book is a newspaper. His fingers are his comb, and the palm of his hand his clothes-brush. He conceals his antiquated linen by the help of a close vest, and adroitly claps a bur on the rent hole of his stocking, while walking to church.

Follow him home. Behold his felicitous knack of metamorphosing all kinds of furniture into all kinds of furniture. A brick constitutes his right andiron, and a stone his left. His bellows is his hearth-brush, and a hat his bellows, and that, too, borrowed from a broken window pane. He shaves himself without a looking glass, by the sole help of imagination. He sits down on a table. His fingers are his snuffers. He puts his candlestick into a chair. That candlestick is a decanter. That decanter was borrowed. That borrowing was without leave. He drinks wine out of a tumbler. A fork is his cork-screw. His wine-glass he converts into a standish.

Very ingenious is he in the whole business of writing a letter. For that purpose he makes use of three-eighths of a sheet of paper. His knees are his writing desk. His ruler is a book cover, and his pencil a spoon handle. He mends his pen with a pair of scissors. He dilutes his ink with water, till it is reduced to invisibility. He uses ashes for sand. He seals his letter with the shreds and relics of his wafer box. His seal is a pin.

O reader, if you have smiled at any part of the foregoing representation, let it be to some purpose. There is no fault we are all so apt to indulge, as that into which we are pushed by the ingenuity of indolence- namely, the invention of expedients.