atic diligence can be accounted a virtue, I merited their
trust. In course of time my income would have been increased, though
never to that degree which means competence or freedom. To this common
object of ambition I had indeed long ago become indifferent. What can
a few extra pounds a year bring to a man who finds himself bound to the
same tasks, and those tasks distasteful? I was married and had two
children; and the most distressing thought of all was that I saw my
children predestined to the same fate. I saw them growing up in
complete destitution of those country sights and sounds which had made
my own youth delightful; acquiring the superficial sharpness of the
city child and his slang; suffering at times by the anaemia and
listlessness bred of vitiated air; high-strung and sensitive as those
must needs be whose nerves are in perpetual agitation; and when, in
chance excursions to the country, I compared my children with the
children of cottagers and ploughmen, I felt that I had wronged them, I
saw my children foredoomed, by an inexorable destiny, to a life at all
points similar with my own. In course of time they also would become
recruits in the narrow-chested, black-coated army of those who sit at
desks. They would become slaves without having known the value of
freedom; slaves not by capture but by heritage. More and more the
thought began to gather shape, Was I getting the most, or the best, out
of life? Was there no other kind of life in which toil was redeemed
from baseness by its own inherent interest, no life which offered more
of tranquil satisfaction and available, if humble, happiness? Day by
day this thought sounded through my mind, and each fresh discouragement
and disability of the life I led gave it sharper emphasis. At last the
time came when I found an answer to it, and these chapters tell the
story of my seeking and my finding.

CHAPTER II

GETTING THE BEST OUT OF LIFE

The reader will perhaps say that the kind of miseries recounted in the
previous chapter are more imaginary than real. Many thousands of
people subsist in London upon narrow means, and do not find the life
intolerable. They have their interests and pleasures, meagre enough
when judged by a superior standard, but sufficient to maintain in them
some of the vivacity of existence. No doubt this is true. I remember
being struck some years ago by the remark of a person of distinction,
equally acquainted with soc