This Energy Of Work, Too, Is Like The
Saints Of Utah, Who Have Made An Oasis And A Garden Where Was A Desert.
After Labouring From Morning Till Night They Like The Sound Of A Feminine
Voice And The Warmth Of A Feminine Welcome In The Back Parlour Of Rest.
This four times married elder - what work, what a pyramid of work, his
life represents!
The young labourer left with his mother and brothers and
sisters to keep, learning carpentering, and bettering his wages - learning
mason-work, picking up the way to manage machinery, inspiring men with
confidence, and beginning to get the leverage of borrowed money, getting
a good name at the bank, managing a little farm, contracting for
building, contracting for hauling - onwards to a larger farm, larger
buildings, big contracts in rising towns, somehow or other grinding money
out of everything by force of will, bending everything to his purpose by
stubborn sinew, always truthful, straightforward, and genuine. Consider
what immense labour this represent! I do not think many such men can be
found, rude and unlettered, yet naturally gentleman-like, to work their
way in the world without the aid of the Lombard Street financiers; in
village life, remember, where all is stagnant and dull - no golden
openings such as occur near great towns. On work-days still wearing the
same old hat - I wonder what material it was originally? - tough leather
probably - its fibres soaked with mortar, its shine replaced by lime, its
shape dented by bricks, its rotundity flattened by timber, stuck about
with cow's hair - for a milker leans his head against the animal - sodden
with rain, and still the same old hat.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 74 of 394
Words from 20013 to 20292
of 105669