God made man work in a garden before he gave him power to write books
or keep accounts. Fine white hands are very pretty when they belong
to a lady; but sunburnt, muscular ones are beautiful in the vineyard.
May I warn you not to despise the small amount of work you can
accomplish, as compared with what others are able to do? Let me remind
you, too, it is not what we get in money, buildings, knowledge,
reputation, influence, by means of work, so much as what labor does
for ourselves, our characters. Carlyle expressed the idea in a very
short sentence, "Not what I have, but what I do, is my kingdom."
Even if our work is spoilt as we near its completion, and, instead
of gain, failure awaits us, we have still been winners in ourselves,
because we have acquired habits of industry, have made our powers of
perseverance stronger, and have developed physical or mental strength
as well. Work is never lost. When Carlyle sat down to write his "French
Revolution" the second time,--a careless servant having burnt his
manuscript,--he was a nobler man than when he wrote out the first issue.
When Walter Scott failed, and Abbotsford was encumbered with a large
debt, when his dream of restoring a kind of baronial life was all
shattered, he did a grander work than in the building of that
magnificent estate; for he strove with all the powers of his mind to
earn the money which should repay his creditors.
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