D. S. M

ATT are glad to see that the emperor of Austria has bestowed upon an American inventor of sewing machines the “Imperial order of Francis Joseph,” which, in our climate might be translated to mean D. 5. M. — Doctor of Sewing Machines.

We do not know why the learned professions, so called, should have all the titles. Why not treat as honorably the work of the hand as the work of the brain, or that which employs both hand and brain? We know men who are doine nothing for the bettering of the world’s condition — great hulks of laziness and obesity — who have fastened to the end of their name titles as long as the tail of a kite: not a modern Chinese kite, but one of the splendid old-fashioned kites pretty much all tail, with appendages that looked as if a clothes-line with a whole week’s washing were bein translated: a frail, professional name made to carry a big string of D. D., LL.D., F. R. S., S. T. P., X. Y. Z., etc.; while some man who has lightened the labor of a continent, and saved the lives of ten thousand sewing women, is called by the name of his infancy.

We cannot see the practical use of any title at all, if our mother has given us a good name to start with. We like the Quaker way of calling people by their first name. But if titles are to be given, let them be distributed among those who are eminent in any useful employment.

If a merchant show great skill in his business, if he stand head and shoulders above others on the street in his judgment of commercial vicissitude, if he be a pattern of integrity and large-heartedness as well as intelligence, why not, on Exchange, or somewhere else, confer upon him some honorable recognition? What that title shall be we cannot now suggest; but till you can get a better title for such vigorous merchant, call him D. Y. S. — Doctor of the Yard Stick. Why not?

If a farmer know the best order of crops, and can raise thirty bushels of oats where his neighbor ‘can raise only fifteen, if, while other orchards are being devoured, he succeed in exterminating the curculio from his premises, and turn a field of Canada thistles and mullein stalk into a garden of the Lord, and can work miracles by subsoil plough and drainage, and, while others are having their corn uprooted by the birds, sets up in his own fields a scare-crow so natural that all the crows within fifty miles have heard of the horrible apparition, and a young man, crossing the lots at midnight, from a visit to his sweetheart, thinks himself assaulted in the middle of the corn-field by a highwayman with old straw hat and outspread arms, whom he shoots through the heart: in a word, if he be the best agriculturist in all the neighborhood, — why not confer upon him a title suggestive of his superiority? If you think of nothing else, call him T. B. A., Thirty Bushels to the Acre.

In this land, where there is but very little royal blood, and most of that very watery, where nearly all our hands are hard because we are obliged to work, do not let us put more honor on the man who can make a speech or write a book than upon one who reforms agriculture, or regulates merchandise, or invents a labor-saving machine; nor compel our practical workers to go abroad for the bestowal of the “Imperial order of Francis Joseph,” when our grateful American people ought to be willing to confer upon those whose severe work has never yet been recognized the “Imperial order of Homespun and Hard Knuckles.”