And he did so, lying down beneath the pine—
He closed one eye gently and slowly (like letting a lid down on a box of playthings) and then he closed the other eye the same way; and then he knew nothing at all until suddenly a Voice came clap out of the blue sky, calling his name, “Andy Gordon, man! Andy Gordon!” over the hills and far.
Andy was amazed, of course, and said: “Here I am,” with all his might, but without making a bit of sound (just as we all do in dreams).
“The thing the matter with you,” went on the great Voice, without any introduction or anything of the sort but coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, “is that you need Work. You are tired to death with work; work-with-a-little-’w’ is killing the soul out of you, Andy; work-with-a-little-’w’ always does that to men, if you give it the whole chance. But that can’t be helped. You’re bound to have a whole lot of it in your life But—if you don’t mix some Big-’W’ Work in with it, then indeed and indeed your life will be disastrous and your days will be dead.”
Andy did not know but what he was a-dreaming, though his eyes were now wide open and he could see a robin hopping on the sod. “What is it you mean by Big-’W’ Work?” he asked.
“Of course, that’s the Work you love for the Work’s sake. It’s Work you do because you love the thing itself you’re working for.”
“You make that hard to understand,” said Andy.
“Well, and it will be hard for people to understand you when you’re at that sort of Work. They know well enough what you’re about as long as you turn ’em out yards of flannel down at Glastonbury, don’t they?”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” said Andy.
“And it would be the same way if you were a smith and turned ’em out horse shoes, or a bill clerk and turned ’em out bills. They’d understand that.”