ut. And at all events you have a point of view, and that is a
great thing."

"Yes," said he, "a great thing, as long as one is not sure one is
right, but ready to learn, and not desirous to teach. That is the
mistake. We are children at school--we ought not to forget that; but
many of us want to sit in the master's chair, and rap the desk, and
cane the other children."

And so our talk wandered to other things; then we were silent for a
little, while the birds came home to their roosts, and the trees
shivered in the breeze of sunset; till at last the golden glow gathered
in the west, and the sun went down in state behind the crimson line of
sea.

XXII

The Pleasures of Work

I desire to do a very sacred thing to-day: to enunciate a couple of
platitudes and attest them. It is always a solemn moment in life when
one can sincerely subscribe to a platitude. Platitudes are the things
which people of plain minds shout from the steps of the staircase of
life as they ascend; and to discover the truth of a platitude by
experience means that you have climbed a step higher.

The first enunciation is, that in this world we most of us do what we
like. And the corollary to that is, that we most of us like what we do.

Of course, we must begin by taking for granted that we most of us are
obliged to do something. But that granted, it seems to me that it is
very rare to find people who do not take a certain pleasure in their
work, and even secretly congratulate themselves on doing it with a
certain style and efficiency. To find a person who has not some
species of pride of this nature is very rare. Other people may not
share our opinion of our own work. But even in the case of those whose
work is most open to criticism, it is almost invariable to find that
they resent criticism, and are very ready to appropriate praise. I had
a curiously complete instance of this the other day. In a parish which
I often visit, the organ in the church is what is called presided over
by the most infamous executant I have ever heard--an elderly man, who
seldom plays a single chord correctly, and whose attempts to use the
pedals are of the nature of tentative and unsuccessful experiments.
His performance has lately caused a considerable amount of indignation
in the parish, for a new organ has been placed in the church, of far
louder tone than the old instrument, and my friend the organist is
hopelessly adrift upon it. The residen