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 circumstances he has lost the help of an outward necessity.
Again, then, I say, Let us sing a hallelujah and make a fresh beatitude: 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 God 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 noble 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 God is perfection, and whoever strives for it strives for something that is godlike. True painting is only an image of God'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 God'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 Agassiz, when he told the interviewer that he had "no time to make money"; and when he began his will, "I, Louis Agassiz, 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 God, is this not God'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 God,—since He is the fullest good,—
Leaving a blank instead of violins.
He could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins
Without Antonio."