dwelling, who keeps clean his own premises, does something towards
promoting the general health.

It is well to review the progress made in estimating life--to impress
our minds with its existence as a reality; because mind and enterprize
just now tend so strongly to the material and mechanical, that we might
be tempted to doubt, whether any other improvement were to be thought
of. If so, we might well enough stop where we are. But we shall
contemplate with most satisfaction our multiplied facilities for
manufacturing, transportation, fertilizing the earth, and conveying
intelligence, if we see in the whole a store, from which we may draw
with good effect for promoting general welfare, whenever the true end
of these means shall be earnestly studied. Otherwise the discovery,
how to make two kernels of corn grow where one grew before, would all
redound to the tyranny of fashion, and only foreshadow an increase of
artificial wants, quite up to the increased supply; so that want would
still be as close treading on our heels as ever.

But if we yet scarce attain to longer life, better health, or more
content, than fell to the lot of our fathers, with their simpler arts
and manner, because we are forgetting to discriminate between true and
false wants--between real and imaginary happiness: the true voice of
history still is, not that the material means must always thus fall
short of their legitimate end; but that, though the material and the
mechanical travel first and fastest, the moral and the spiritual are
following after. These in due time will reveal the meaning and the
value of our stored acquisitions.

Dr. Franklin calculated, that the labor of all for three or four hours
a day, would furnish all the necessaries and all the conveniences of