Here, then, is work worth doing and worth trying to do well.
And so, if I were minded to welcome any great accession to
our trade, it should not be from any reason of a higher wage,
but because it was a trade which was useful in a very great
and in a very high degree; which every honest tradesman could
make more serviceable to mankind in his single strength;
which was difficult to do well and possible to do better
every year; which called for scrupulous thought on the part
of all who practised it, and hence became a perpetual
education to their nobler natures; and which, pay it as you
please, in the large majority of the best cases will still be
underpaid. For surely, at this time of day in the nineteenth
century, there is nothing that an honest man should fear more
timorously than getting and spending more than he deserves.
CHAPTER III - BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME (14)
THE Editor (15) has somewhat insidiously laid a trap for his
correspondents, the question put appearing at first so
innocent, truly cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, until
after some reconnaissance and review that the writer awakes
to find himself engaged upon something in the nature of
autobiography, or, perhaps worse, upon a chapter in the life
of that little, beautiful brother whom we once all had, and
whom we have all lost and mourned, the man we ought to have
been, the man we hoped to be. But when word has been passed
(even to an editor), it should, if possible, be kept; and if
sometimes I am wise and say too little, and sometimes weak
and say too much, the blame must lie at the door of the
person who entrapped me.
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