that respectable class of citizens called gentlemen, and their much
vilified brethren, familiarly known as loafers. Over the gateways of
this new world Manchester glares the inscription, "Work, or die".
Here

"Every worm beneath the moon
Draws different threads, and late or soon
Spins, toiling out his own cocoon."

The founders of this city probably never dreamed of the theory of
Charles Lamb in respect to the origin of labor:--

"Who first invented work, and thereby bound
The holiday rejoicing spirit down
To the never-ceasing importunity
Of business in the green fields and the town?

"Sabbathless Satan,--he who his unglad
Task ever plies midst rotatory burnings
For wrath divine has made him like a wheel
In that red realm from whence are no returnings."

Rather, of course, would they adopt Carlyle's apostrophe of "Divine
labor, noble, ever fruitful,--the grand, sole miracle of man;" for this
is indeed a city consecrated to thrift,--dedicated, every square rod of
it, to the divinity of work; the gospel of industry preached daily and
hourly from some thirty temples, each huger than the Milan Cathedral or
the Temple of Jeddo, the Mosque of St. Sophia or the Chinese pagoda of a
hundred bells; its mighty sermons uttered by steam and water-power; its
music the everlasting jar of mechanism and the organ-swell of many