stages and start clear; as long as it is raw material, all in solution, all hanging in the balance—you can do anything. It is like "clay in the hands of the potter," and you can make the vessel as you please: "Out of the same lump making one vessel to honour and another to dishonour." But when the work is half-done, when colour is calling out to colour, and shape to shape, and thought to thought, throughout the length and breadth of the work; when the ideas and the clothing of them are all fusing together into one harmony; when, in short, the thing is becoming that indestructible, unalterable unity which we call a Work of Art:—then, indeed, to be required to change or to reconsider is a real agony of impossibility; tearing the glowing web of thought, and form, and fancy into a destruction never to be reconstructed, and which no piecing or patching will mend.
There are many minor points, but they are really so entirely matters of experience, that it hardly seems worth while to dwell upon them. Start with recognising the fact that you must try to add business habits and sensible and
economical ways to your genius as an artist; in short, another whole side to your character; and keep that ever in view, and the details will fall into their places.
Have Everything in Order.—Every letter relating to a current job should be findable at a moment's notice in an office "letter basket," rather wider than a sheet of foolscap paper, and with sides high enough to allow of the papers standing upright in unfolded sheets, each group of them behind a card taller than the tallest kind of ordinary document, and bearing along the top edge in large red letters—Roman capitals for choice—the name of the work: and it need hardly be said that these should be arranged in alphabetical order. For minor matters too small for such classification it is well to have, in the front place in the basket, cards dividing the alphabet itself into about four parts, so that unarranged small matters can be still kept roughly alphabetical. When the work is done, transfer all documents to separate labelled portfolios—a folded sheet of the thickest brown paper, such as they put under carpets, is very good—and store them away for reference. Larger portfolios
for all templates, tracings, or architects' details or drawings relating to the work. If you have not a good system with regard to the ordering of these things, believe me the mere administration of a very moderate amount of work will take you all your day.
So also with measurement.
ON ACCURACY IN MEASUREMENT.
In one of Turgenieff's novels a Russian country proverb is quoted—"Measure thrice, cut once." It is a golden rule, and should be inscribed in the heart of every worker, and I will add one that springs out of it—"Never trust a measurement unless it has been made by yourself, or for yourself—to your order."
The measurements on architects' designs, or even working drawings, can never be trusted for the dimensions of the built work. Even the builders' templates, by which the work was built, cannot be, for the masons knock these quite enough out, in actual building, to make your work done by these guides a misfit. Have your own measurements taken again. Above all, beware of trusting to the supposed verticals or horizontals in built work,
especially in tracery. A thing may be theoretically and intentionally at a certain angle, but actually at quite a different one. If level is important, take it yourself with spirit-level and plumb-line.