“Oh no; it isn’t as bad as that, Danny.”
“They’d think you’d been disgraced for life, to become a laborin’ man, you bet.”
“A what?”
“A laborin’ man.”
“Then you think that a parson doesn’t labor?”
“Well, I always thought that bein’ a parson was a dead easy job, and a nice clean job too.”
“Danny,” Maxwell inquired after a momentary silence, “don’t you suppose that a man labors with his brain as well as with his muscles? And sometimes a parson labors with his heart, and that is the hardest kind of work a man ever does. The man who is most 244 of a laboring man is the man who labors with every power and faculty he possesses.”
“Well, now, I guess that may be right, if you look at it that way.”
“Yes; you speak of a laboring man, and you mean a man who uses his muscles and lets his brain and his feelings die of starvation. To try to help some one you’re fond of, who is going to the bad, is the most nerve-racking and exhausting work which any man can possibly do.”
“Hm! you always was a dum queer parson, more like the rest of us, somehow. And you don’t hold that you’re disgracin’ your profession ridin’ with me, and shovelin’ gravel?”