gambler, cannot extort the knowledge of material and moral
nature which his honest care and pains yield to the operative.
The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the
Power; but they who do not the thing have not the power.

Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharpening
of a stake to the construction of a city or an epic, is
one immense illustration of the perfect compensation of
the universe. The absolute balance of Give and Take, the
doctrine that every thing has its price,--and if that
price is not paid, not that thing but something else is
obtained, and that it is impossible to get any thing
without its price,--is not less sublime in the columns
of a leger than in the budgets of states, in the laws of
light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of
nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws which each man
sees implicated in those processes with which he is
conversant, the stern ethics which sparkle on his chisel-
edge, which are measured out by his plumb and foot-rule,
which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill
as in the history of a state,--do recommend to him his
trade, and though seldom named, exalt his business to his
imagination.

The league between virtue and nature engages all things
to assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws and
substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor.
He finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit,
but there is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue.
Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a