But alone, he got it all at last—the passion and power of the spiritual workman which sustains him now, though his body has lain under the hill for fifty years. His shop is the place of a greater transaction than his task. The breadth and essence of it that lingers makes it a sacred place to the few who would take off their shoes to enter—were it not for the misunderstanding of the world.
Out of the artificial he became natural; out of the workman, he emerged a man, a living soul.
I would support every plan or dream of education, and none other, that seeks to find for the youth his life work. I would call upon every workman personally to help; and urge for every community, the goodness of its products and not the richness of its markets. I would put the world's premium upon fine workmanship of the hand or brain or spirit; and a stiff pressure upon the multiplication of these products by mechanical means, for we have too many common things, and so few fine things. I would inculcate in the educational ideal, first of all, that in every man there is a dream, just as there is a soul, and that to express the dream of the soul in matter is the perfect individual performance. I would impress upon the youth that in all arts and crafts, the dream fades and the spirit of the product dies away, when many are made in the original likeness. Nature does not make duplicates; her creative hallmark is upon every leaf and bee; upon every cliff and cloud and star.
I would not endow the young workman while he is learning his trade or art; but I would have the State intensely watchful of him, and impassioned with parental conviction that her greatness is inseparable with his possibilities of achievement. I would not make his ways short, but despise and crush all evidences of facility. I would keep him plain and lean and fit, and make him earn his peace. All fine work comes from the cultivation of the self, not from cultivated environment.... I dreamed for twenty years of a silent room and an open wood fire. I shall never cease to wonder at the marvel of it, now that it has come. It is so to-night alone in the stillness. The years of struggle to produce in the midst of din and distraction, while they wore as much as the work itself, were helpful to bring the concentration which every decent task demands; and in the thrill of which a man grows in reality, and not otherwise.
7
THE LITTLE GIRL
It was determined that the children should try the country-town school that Spring from April to June. This school was said to be of exceptional quality, and I talked with the master, a good man. In fact, there was none but the general causes for criticism in this establishment—the same things I found amiss in city schools. The children accepted the situation with a philosophy of obedience which should have taught the race many things it does not yet know. The journey was considerable for them twice daily in warming weather; and from little things I heard from time to time, words dropped with no idea of rebellion, I was reminded of the dark drama of my own "Education," written explicitly enough elsewhere and which I am glad to forget.