The Weekly Herald

Equally Applicable Now.

A good many years ago Tom Corwin, of blessed memory, when secretary of the treasury, gave some advice to a young man who came to him with an application for office that deserves to be written in letters of gold and hung up in the conspicuous places about Washington. 'My dear boy,' said he, 'go to the Northwest, buy one hundred and sixty acres of government land, or, if you have not got the money to purchase, squat on it, get you an axe and a mattock, put up a log cabin for your habitation and raise a little corn and potatoes; keep your conscience clear and live like a freeman, your own master, with no one to give you orders and without dependence upon anybody. Do that, and you will be honored, respected, influential and rich. But accept a clerkship here, and you sink at once all independence; your energies become relaxed, and you are unfitted for any other and more independent position. I may give you a place to-day and turn you out to-morrow; and there's another man over at the White House who can turn me out, and the people by-and-by can turn him out, and so we go. But if you own an acre of land it is your kingdom, and your cabin is your castle; you are a sovereign, and you will feel it in every throbbing of your pulse, and every day of your life will assure me of your thanks for having thus advised you.'