“Then perhaps you have served your apprenticeship in worthless things, and the inclination to write comes now of precious things on their way, which you do not yet see or suspect, not to say know!”
“But many men and women have the impulse to write, who never write anything of much worth!”
Molly thought awhile.
“What if they yielded to the impulse before they ought? What if their eagerness to write when they ought to have been doing something else, destroyed the call in them? That is perhaps the reason why there are so many dull preachers—that they begin to speak before they have anything to say!”
“Teaching would be favorable to learning!”
“It would tire your brain, and give you too much to do with books! You would learn chiefly from thoughts, and I stand up for things first. And where would be your leisure?”
“You have something in your mind, Molly! I will do whatever you would have me!”
“No, Walter,” exclaimed Molly, with a flash, “I will take no such promise! You will, I know, do what I or any one else may propose, if it appears to you right! But don’t you think that, for the best work, a man ought to be independent of the work?”
“You would have your poet a rich man!”
“Just the contrary, Walter! A rich man is the most dependent of all—at least most rich men are. Take his riches, and what could himself do for himself? He depends on his money. No; I would have the poet earn his bread by the sweat of his brow—with his hands feed his body, and with his heart and brain the hearts of his brothers and sisters. We have talked much about this, your father and I. That a man is not a gentleman who works with his hands, is the meanest, silliest article in the social creed of our country. He who would be a better gentleman than the Carpenter of Nazareth, is not worthy of Him. He gave up His working only to do better work for His brothers and sisters, and then He let the men and women, but mostly, I suspect, the women, that loved Him, support him! Thousands upon thousands of young men think it more gentlemanly to be clerks than to be carpenters, but, if I were a man, I would rather make anything, than add up figures and copy stupid letters all day long! If I had brothers, I would ten times rather see them masons, or carpenters, or book-binders, or shoe-makers, than have them doing what ought to be left for the weaker and more delicate!”