If you want a field of labor,
You can find it anywhere. (Text.)
(1750)
LABOR-SAVING DEVICES
I have heard old men say that the mere easy use of friction-matches saves every day for each active man and woman ten minutes of life. I think that is true. You are not old enough to remember the adventures of the boy called out of his bed in the morning to go and fetch a pan of coals from the next neighbor’s. The lad tumbles into his clothes, plows through the snow, finds that Mrs. Smith’s luck has been better than his mother’s, and the careful ashes of her hearth have preserved the vestal fire. A glowing brand is given him in his warming-pan, and he returns in triumph home. The alternative would have been to strike flint against steel, not to say against knuckles, till a reluctant spark fell on tinder equally reluctant, till this was fanned by careful breath till it would light a match which would light a candle. The journey to Mrs. Smith’s was, on the whole, light in comparison. Does one trivial invention save twenty minutes a day in each household, ten minutes to a man, ten minutes to a woman? That is a saving for this nation of more than twice the amount of work which Cheops put upon his pyramid, and so much addition to the real resources of the world is made by that one invention.—Edward Everett Hale.
(1751)
See [Precaution].
Lad with Ready Answer—See [Early Religion].
Lamb, The, Slain—See [Christ the Lamb].
LANGUAGE, FORMATION OF