Vocal Expression Part 2

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so n.o.bly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under G.o.d, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.--_Address at Gettysburg_, ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

From an address delivered in the Auditorium, at Chicago, on the afternoon of February 22, 1902, on the occasion of the celebration of Was.h.i.+ngton's Birthday.

The meaning of Was.h.i.+ngton in American history is discipline. The message of Was.h.i.+ngton's life to the American people is discipline.

The need of American character is discipline.

Was.h.i.+ngton did not give patriotism to the American colonies. The people had that as abundantly as he. He did not give them courage.

That quality was and is in the American blood. He did not even give them resource. There were intellects more productive than his. But Was.h.i.+ngton gave balance and direction to elemental forces. He was the genius of order. He was poise personified. He was the spirit of discipline. He was the first Great Conservative. It was this quality in him that made all other elements of the Revolution effective. It was this that organized our nebulous independence into a nation of liberty. The parts of a machine are useless until a.s.sembled and fitted each to its appropriate place. Was.h.i.+ngton was the master mechanic of our nation; so it is that we are a people.

But we are not yet a perfect people. We are still in the making. It is a glorious circ.u.mstance. Youth is the n.o.blest of G.o.d's gifts.

The youth of a nation is like the youth of a man. The American people are young? Yes! Vital? Yes! Powerful? Yes! Disciplined? Not entirely. Moderate? Not yet, but growing in that grace. And therefore on this, his day, I bear you the message of Was.h.i.+ngton--he, whose sanity, orderliness, and calm have reached through the century, steadying us, overcoming in us the untamed pa.s.sions of riotous youth.--_Conservatism; the Spirit of National Self-Restraint_, ALBERT BEVERIDGE.

We have noted in our introduction the close a.n.a.logy which exists between the evolution of vocal expression and the evolution of verbal expression. Let us not fail to follow this a.n.a.logy through the various studies which make up this one study of interpretation. We have begun our work in vocal expression with the subject of direct appeal. What corresponds to this step in the evolution of verbal expression?

Mr. J. H. Gardiner, in his illuminating text for the student of English composition, called _The Forms of Prose Literature_,[1] discusses these forms first under the two great heads of the "Literature of Thought" and the "Literature of Feeling," and then under the four sub-t.i.tles which all instruction in rhetoric recognizes as the accepted divisions of literature: Exposition, Argument, Description, and Narrative. We do not find the _exact_ parallel for our study in direct appeal under these subheads. Do we? No. In order "to take the plunge" in the study of English composition which shall correspond to our preliminary effort in interpretation, we must set aside for the moment the question of _exposition_, to be entered upon as a "first study" in verbal expression corresponding to the question of _vitality in thinking_, which is our first study in vocal expression, and look for a parallel "preliminary study" in composition.

[1] _The Forms of Prose Literature_, courtesy of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons.

In his comparative study of exposition and argumentation Mr. Gardiner says: "An exceedingly good explanation may leave its reader quite unmoved: a good argument never does. Even if it does not convert him, it should at least make him uncomfortable. Now, when we say that argument must move its reader, we begin to pa.s.s from the realm of pure thought, in which exposition takes rise, to that of feeling, for feeling is a necessary preliminary to action. How large a part feelings play in argument you can see if you have ever heard the speech of a demagogue to an excited crowd. It is simply a cra.s.s appeal to their lower pa.s.sions, aided by all the devices of oratory, often, perhaps, also by a moving presence. A better example is Henry Ward Beecher's Liverpool speech, in which he won a hearing from a hostile mob by an appeal to their sense of fair play. Such cases show how far argument may get from the simple appeal to the understanding, how little it may be confined to the element of thought. The prime quality, therefore, of argument is _persuasiveness_."

Not argument, then, but the element in argument, called persuasion, furnishes the study in composition which corresponds to direct appeal in interpretation. And just as truly as your intent to convince another mind of the truth of your author's thought will often take care of all other elements in the problem of its vocal expression and result in _convincing interpretation_, so the intent to persuade another mind of the truth of your own thought will often take care of all other elements in the problem of verbal expression and result in _moving composition_.

Following Mr. Gardiner a little further in his discussion of persuasion, we find our study in interpretation in direct accord with his advice in the study of composition, for he says: "This element of persuasion belongs to that aspect of literature which has to do with the feelings; and, as depending on the personal equation of the writer, it is much less easy than the intellectual element to catch and generalize from, and almost impossible to teach. All that I can do is to examine it in good examples, and then make very tentatively a few suggestions based on these examples. For it cannot too often be written down in such a treatise as this that the teacher of writing can no more make a great writer than the teacher of painting can turn out a new Rembrandt or a Millet; in either case the most that the teacher can do is to furnish honest and illuminating criticism, and to save his pupil unnecessary and tedious steps by showing him the methods and devices which have been worked out by the masters of the craft."

In treating the question of pure style, as another division of the power of persuasion, Mr. Gardiner says: "It is almost impossible to give practical help toward acquiring this gift of an expressive style; the ear for the rhythm and a.s.sonance of style is like an ear for music, though more common, perhaps. It is good practice to read aloud the writing of men who are famous for the quality, and, when you read to yourself, always to have in mind the sound of what you read. The more you can give yourself of this exercise, the more when you write, yourself, will you hear the way your own style sounds."

With our idea for a combined study of the two great forms of expression reinforced by such authority, let us, in taking our next step in this preliminary study in vocal expression, make it also a preliminary study in verbal expression by using as our next selection for interpretation, not a fragment of an address or a part of an oration, but a complete example of persuasive discourse. Such an example we find in this sermon of Mr. Gannett's "Blessed be Drudgery." And, as we try our growing powers of lucid interpretation upon this subject-matter, let us stop to note its verbal construction and its obedience to the laws of persuasive discourse. The interpretation must be made in the cla.s.s-room, because interpretation needs an immediate audience; the a.n.a.lysis of the literary form may be made in your study: the two processes should be carried on as far as possible together.

BLESSED BE DRUDGERY[2]

[2] This sermon is published with the kind permission of the author and the publisher.

I

Of every two men probably one man thinks he is a drudge, and every second woman is _sure_ she is. Either we are not doing the thing we would like to do in life; or, in what we do and like, we find so much to dislike that the rut tires even when the road runs on the whole, a pleasant way. I am going to speak of the _Culture that comes through this very drudgery_.

"Culture through my drudgery!" some one is now thinking: "This treadmill that has worn me out, this grind I hate, this plod that, as long ago as I remember it, seemed tiresome--to this have I owed 'culture'? Keeping house or keeping accounts, tending babies, teaching primary school, weighing sugar and salt at a counter, those blue overalls in the machine shop--have these anything to do with 'culture'? Culture takes leisure, elegance, wide margins of time, a pocket-book; drudgery means limitations, coa.r.s.eness, crowded hours, chronic worry, old clothes, black hands, headaches.

Culture implies college: life allows a daily paper, a monthly magazine, the circulating library, and two gift-books at Christmas.

Our real and our ideal are not twins--never were! I want the books,--but the clothes-basket wants me. The two children are good,--and so would be two hours a day without the children. I crave an outdoor life,--and walk down-town of mornings to perch on a high stool till supper-time. I love Nature,--and figures are my fate. My taste is books,--and I farm it. My taste is art,--and I correct exercises. My taste is science,--and I measure tape. I am young and like stir,--the business jogs on like a stage-coach. Or I am _not_ young, I am getting gray over my ears, and like to sit down and be still,--but the drive of the business keeps both tired arms stretched out full length. I hate this overbidding and this underselling, this spry, unceasing compet.i.tion, and would willingly give up a quarter of my profits to have two hours of my daylight to myself,--at least I would if, working just as I do, I did not barely get the children bread and clothes. I did not choose my calling, but was dropped into it--by my innocent conceit, or by duty to the family, or by a parent's foolish pride, or by our hasty marriage; or a mere accident wedged me into it. Would I could have my life over again! Then, whatever I _should_ be, at least I would _not_ be what I am to-day!"

Have I spoken truly for any one here? I know I have. Goes not the grumble thus within the silent breast of many a person, whose pluck never lets it escape to words like these, save now and then on a tired evening to husband or to wife?

There is often truth and justice in the grumble. Truth and justice both. Still, when the question rises through the grumble, Can it be that drudgery, not to be escaped, gives "culture"? the true answer is--Yes, and culture of the prime elements of life; of the very fundamentals of all fine manhood and fine womanhood.

Our _prime_ elements are due to our drudgery--I mean that literally; the _fundamentals_ that underlie all fineness and without which no other culture worth the winning is even possible.

These, for instance--and what names are more familiar? Power of attention; power of industry; prompt.i.tude in beginning work; method and accuracy and despatch in doing work; perseverance; courage before difficulties; cheer under straining burdens; self-control and self-denial and temperance. These are the prime qualities; these the fundamentals. We have heard these names before! When we were small mother had a way of harping on them, and father joined in emphatically, and the minister used to refer to them in church.

And this was what our first employer meant--only his way of putting the matter was, "Look sharp, my boy!"--"Be on time, John!"--"Stick to it!" Yes, that is just what they all meant: these _are_ the very qualities which the mothers tried to tuck into us when they tucked us into bed, the very qualities which the ministers pack into their plat.i.tudes, and which the nations pack into their proverbs. And that goes to _show_ that they are the fundamentals. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are very handy, but these fundamentals of a man are handier to have; worth more; worth more than Latin and Greek and French and German and music and art-history and painting and wax flowers and travels in Europe added together. These last are the decorations of a man or woman: even reading and writing are but conveniences: those other things are the _indispensables_. They make one's sit-fast strength and one's active momentum, whatsoever and wheresoever the lot in life be--be it wealth or poverty, city or country, library or workshop. Those qualities make the solid substance of one's self.

And the question I would ask of myself and you is, How do we get them? How do they become ours? High-school and college can give much, but these are never on their programmes. All the book processes that we go to the schools for, and commonly call "our education," give no more than _opportunity_ to win these indispensables of education. How, then, do we get them? We get them somewhat as the fields and valleys get their grace. Whence is it that the lines of river and meadow and hill and lake and sh.o.r.e conspire to-day to make the landscape beautiful? Only by long chiselings and steady pressures. Only by ages of glacier crush and grind, by scour of floods, by centuries of storm and sun. These rounded the hills, and scooped the valley-curves, and mellowed the soil for meadow-grace. There was little grace in the operation, had we been there to watch. It was "drudgery" all over the land. Mother Nature was down on her knees doing her early scrubbing work! That was yesterday: to-day, result of scrubbing-work, we have the laughing landscape.

Now what is true of the earth is true of each man and woman on the earth. Father and mother and the ancestors before them have done much to bequeath those elemental qualities to us; but that which scrubs them into us, the clinch which makes them actually ours, and keeps them ours, and adds to them as the years go by--that depends on our own plod, our plod in the rut, our drill of habit; in one word, depends upon our "drudgery." It is because we have to go, and _go_, morning after morning, through rain, through s.h.i.+ne, through toothache, headache, heartache, to the appointed spot, and do the appointed work; because, and only because, we have to stick to that work through the eight or ten hours, long after rest would be so sweet; because the school-boy's lesson must be learned at nine o'clock and learned without a slip; because the accounts on the ledger must square to a cent; because the goods must tally exactly with the invoice; because good temper must be kept with children, customers, neighbors, not seven, but seventy times seven times; because the besetting sin must be watched to-day, to-morrow, and the next day; in short, without much matter _what_ our work be, whether this or that, it is because, and only because, of the rut, plod, grind, humdrum _in_ the work, that we at last get those self-foundations laid of which I spoke,--attention, promptness, accuracy, firmness, patience, self-denial, and the rest. When I think over that list and seriously ask myself three questions, I have to answer each with _No_:--Are there any qualities in the list which I can afford to spare, to go without, as mere show-qualities?

Not one. Can I get these self-foundations laid, save by the weight, year in, year out, of the steady pressures? No, there is no other way. Is there a single one in the list which I cannot get in some degree by undergoing the steady drills and pressures? No, not one.

Then beyond all books, beyond all cla.s.s-work at the school, beyond all special opportunities of what I call my "education," it is this drill and pressure of my daily task that is my great school-master. _My daily task_, whatever it be--_that is what mainly educates me_. All other culture is mere luxury compared with what that gives. That gives the indispensables. Yet fool that I am, this pressure of my daily task is the very thing that I so growl at as my "drudgery"!

We can add right here this fact, and practically it is a very important fact to girls and boys as ambitious as they ought to be,---the higher our ideals, the _more_ we need those foundation habits strong. The street-cleaner can better afford to drink and laze than he who would make good shoes; and to make good shoes takes less force of character and brain than to make cures in the sick-room, or laws in the legislature, or children in the nursery.

The man who makes the head of a pin or the split of a pen all day long, and the man who must put fresh thought into his work at every stroke,--which of the two more needs the self-control, the method, the accuracy, the power of attention and concentration? Do you sigh for books and leisure and wealth? It takes more "concentration" to use books--head tools--well than to use hand tools. It takes more "self-control" to use leisure well than workdays. Compare the Sundays and Mondays of your city; which day, all things considered, stands for the city's higher life,--the day on which so many men are lolling, or the day on which all toil? It takes more knowledge, more integrity, more justice, to handle riches well than to bear the healthy pinch of the just-enough.

Do you think that the great and famous escape drudgery? The native power and temperament, the outfit and capital at birth, counts for much, but it convicts us common minds of huge mistake to hear the uniform testimony of the more successful geniuses about their genius. "Genius is patience," said who? Sir Isaac Newton. "The Prime Minister's secret is patience," said who? Mr. Pitt, the great Prime Minister of England. Who, think you, wrote, "My imagination would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention"?

It was Charles d.i.c.kens. Who said "The secret of a Wall Street million is common honesty"? Vanderbilt; and he added as the recipe for a million (I know somebody would like to learn it), "Never use what is not your own, never buy what you cannot pay for, never sell what you haven't got." How simple great men's rules are! How easy it is to be a great man! Order, diligence, patience, honesty,--just what you and I must use in order to put our dollar in the savings-bank, to do our school-boy sum, to keep the farm thrifty, and the house clean, and the babies neat. Order, diligence, patience, honesty! There is wide difference between men, but truly it lies less in some special gift or opportunity granted to one and withheld from another, than in the differing degree in which these common elements of human power are owned and used. Not how much talent have I, but how much will to use the talent that I have, is the main question. Not how much do I know, but how much do I do with what I know? To do their great work the great ones need more of the very same habits which the little ones need to do their smaller work. Goethe, Spencer, Aga.s.siz, Jesus, share, not achievements, but conditions of achievement, with you and me. And those conditions for them, as for us, are largely the plod, the drill, the long disciplines of toil. If we ask such men their secret, they will uniformly tell us so.

Since we lay the firm substrata of ourselves in this way, then, and only in this way; and since the higher we aim, the more, and not the less, we need these firm substrata,--since this is so, I think we ought to make up our minds and our mouths to sing a hallelujah unto Drudgery: _Blessed be Drudgery_,--the one thing that we cannot spare!

II

But there is something else to be said. Among the people who are drudges there are some who have given up their dreams of what, when younger, they used to talk or think about as their "ideals"; and have grown at last, if not content, resigned to do the actual work before them. Yes, here it is,--before us, and behind us, and on all sides of us; we cannot change it; we have accepted it. Still, we have not given up one dream,--the dream of _success_ in this work to which we are _so_ clamped. If we cannot win the well-beloved one, then success with the ill-beloved,--this at least is left to hope for. Success may make _it_ well-beloved, too,--who knows?

Well, the secret of this success still lies in the same old word, "drudgery." For drudgery is the doing of one thing, one thing, one thing, long after it ceases to be amusing; and it is this "one thing I do" that gathers me together from my chaos, that concentrates me from possibilities to powers, and turns powers into achievements. "One thing I do," said Paul, and, apart from what his one thing was, in that phrase he gave the watchword of salvation.

That whole long string of habits--attention, method, patience, self-control, and the others--can be rolled up and balled, as it were, in the word "concentration." We will halt a moment at the word:

"I give you the end of a golden string: Only wind it into a ball,-- It will lead you in at Heaven's gate, Built in Jerusalem's wall."

Men may be divided into two cla.s.ses,--those who have a "one thing,"

and those who have no "one thing," to do; those with aim, and those without aim, in their lives: and practically it turns out that almost all of the success, and, therefore, the greater part of the happiness, go to the first cla.s.s. The aim in life is what the backbone is in the body: without it we are invertebrate, belong to some lower order of being not yet man. No wonder that the great question, therefore, with a young man is, What am I to be? and that the future looks rather gloomy until the life-path opens. The lot of many a girl, especially of many a girl with a rich father, is a tragedy of aimlessness. Social standards, and her lack of true ideals and of real education, have condemned her to be frittered: from twelve years old she is a cripple to be pitied, and by thirty she comes to know it. With the brothers the blame is more their own. The boys we used to play our school games with have found their places; they are winning homes and influence and money, their natures are growing strong and shapely, and their days are filling with the happy sense of accomplishment,--while _we_ do not yet know what we are. We have no meaning on the earth. Lose us, and the earth has lost nothing; no niche is empty, no force has ceased to play, for we have got no aim, and therefore we are still--n.o.body.

_Get your meaning_ first of all! Ask the question until it is answered past question, What am I? What do I stand for? What name do I bear in the register of forces? In our national cemeteries there are rows on rows of unknown bodies of our soldiers,--men who did a work and put a meaning to their lives; for the mother and the townsmen say, "He died in the war." But the men and women whose lives are aimless reverse their fates. Our _bodies_ are known, and answer in this world to such or such a name,--but as to our inner _selves_, with real and awful meaning our walking bodies might be labeled, "An unknown man sleeps here!"

Now, since it is concentration that prevents this tragedy of failure, and since this concentration always involves drudgery, long, hard, abundant, we have to own again, I think, that that is even more than what I called it first,--our chief school-master; besides that, drudgery is the gray Angel of Success. The main secret of any success we may hope to rejoice in is in that angel's keeping. Look at the leaders in the profession, the "solid" men in business, the master-workmen who begin as poor boys and end by building a town in which to house their factory hands; they are drudges of the single aim. The man of science, and to-day more than ever, if he would add to the world's knowledge, or even get a reputation, must be, in some one branch at least, a plodding specialist. The great inventors, Palissy at his pots, Goodyear at his rubber, Elias Howe at his sewing-machine, tell the secret,--"One thing I do." The reformer's secret is the same. A one-eyed, grim-jawed folk the reformers are apt to be: one-eyed, grim-jawed, seeing but the one thing, never letting go, they have to be, to start a torpid nation. All these men as doers of the single thing drudge their way to their success. Even so must we, would we win ours. The foot-loose man is _not_ the enviable man. A wise man will be his own necessity and bind himself to a task, if by early wealth or foolish parents or other lowering circ.u.mstances he has lost the help of an outward necessity.

Again, then, I say, Let us sing a hallelujah and make a fresh beat.i.tude: _Blessed be Drudgery!_ It is the one thing we cannot spare.

III

This is a hard gospel, is it not? But now there is a pleasanter word to briefly say. To lay the firm foundations in ourselves, or even to win success in life, we _must_ be drudges. But we _can_ be _artists_, also, in our daily task. And at that word things brighten.

"Artists," I say,--not artisans. "The difference?" This: the artist is he who strives to perfect his work,--the artisan strives to get through it. The artist would fain finish, too; but with him it is to "finish the work G.o.d has given me to do!" It is not how great a thing we do, but how well we do the thing we have to, that puts us in the n.o.ble brotherhood of artists. My Real is not my Ideal,--is that my complaint? One thing, at least, is in my power: if I cannot realize my Ideal, I can at least _idealize my Real_. How? By trying to be perfect in it. If I am but a rain-drop in a shower, I will be, at least, a perfect drop; if but a leaf in a whole June, I will be, at least, a perfect leaf. This poor "one thing I do,"--instead of repining at its lowness or its hardness, I will make it glorious by my supreme loyalty to its demand.

An artist himself shall speak. It was Michael Angelo who said: "Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavor to create something perfect; for G.o.d is perfection, and whoever strives for it strives for something that is G.o.dlike. True painting is only an image of G.o.d's perfection,--a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony." The great masters in music, the great masters in all that we call artistry, would echo Michael Angelo in this; he speaks the artist essence out. But what holds good upon their grand scale and with those whose names are known, holds equally good of all pursuits and all lives. That true painting is an image of G.o.d's perfection must be true, if he says so; but no more true of painting than of shoemaking, of Michael Angelo than of John Pounds, the cobbler. I asked a cobbler once how long it took to become a good shoemaker; he answered, promptly, "Six years,--and then you must travel!" That cobbler had the artist soul. I told a friend the story, and he asked his cobbler the same question: How long does it take to become a good shoemaker? "All your life, sir." That was still better,--a Michael Angelo of shoes! Mr. Maydole, the hammer-maker, of central New York, was an artist: "Yes," said he to Mr. Parton, "I have made hammers here for twenty-eight years." "Well, then, you ought to be able to make a pretty good hammer by this time." "No, sir," was the answer, "I _never_ made a pretty good hammer. I make the best hammer made in the United States." Daniel Morell, once president of the Cambria Railworks in Pittsburgh, which employed seven thousand men, was an artist, and trained artists. "What is the secret of such a development of business as this?" asked the visitor. "We have no secret," was the answer; "we always try to beat our last batch of rails. That's all the secret we have, and we don't care who knows it." The Paris bookbinder was an artist, who, when the rare volume of Corneille, discovered in a book-stall, was brought to him, and he was asked how long it would take him to bind it, answered, "Oh, sir, you must give me a year, at least; _this_ needs all my care." Our Ben Franklin showed the artist when he began his own epitaph, "Benjamin Franklin, printer." And Professor Aga.s.siz, when he told the interviewer that he had "no time to make money"; and when he began his will, "I, Louis Aga.s.siz, teacher."

In one of Murillo's pictures in the Louvre he shows us the interior of a convent kitchen; but doing the work there are, not mortals in old dresses, but beautiful white-winged angels. One serenely puts the kettle on the fire to boil, and one is lifting up a pail of water with heavenly grace, and one is at the kitchen dresser reaching up for plates; and I believe there is a little cherub running about and getting in the way, trying to help. What the old monkish legend that it represented is, I hardly know. But, as the painter puts it to you on his canvas, all are so busy, and working with such a will, and so refining the work as they do it, that somehow you forget that pans are pans and pots pots, and only think of the angels, and how very natural and beautiful kitchen-work is,--just what the angels would do, of course.

It is the angel-aim and standard in an act that consecrates it. He who aims for perfectness in a trifle is trying to do that trifle holily. The _trier_ wears the halo, and therefore, the halo grows as quickly round the brows of peasant as of king. This aspiration to do perfectly,--is it not religion practicalized? If we use the name of G.o.d, is this not G.o.d's presence becoming actor in us? No need, then, of being "great" to share that aspiration and that presence. The smallest roadside pool has its water from heaven, and its gleam from the sun, and can hold the stars in its bosom, as well as the great ocean. Even so the humblest man or woman can live splendidly! That is the royal truth that we need to believe,--you and I who have no "mission," and no great sphere to move in. The universe is not quite complete without _my_ work well done. Have you ever read George Eliot's poem called "Stradivarius"?

Stradivarius was the famous old violin-maker, whose violins, nearly two centuries old, are almost worth their weight in gold to-day.

Says Stradivarius in the poem:

"If my hand slacked, I should rob G.o.d,--since He is the fullest good,-- Leaving a blank instead of violins.

_He_ could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins Without Antonio."

That is just as true of us as of our greatest brothers. What, stand with slackened hands and fallen heart before the littleness of your service! Too little, is it, to be perfect in it? Would you, then, if you were Master, risk a greater treasure in the hands of such a man? Oh, there is no man, no woman, so small that they cannot make their life great by high endeavor; no sick crippled child on its bed that cannot fill a niche of service _that_ way in the world.