the other ways of getting a living in
that day, but to talk of dignity attaching to labor of any
sort under the system then prevailing was absurd. There is no
way in which selling labor for the highest price it will
fetch is more dignified than selling goods for what can be
got. Both were commercial transactions to be judged by the
commercial standard. By setting a price in money on his
service, the worker accepted the money measure for it, and
renounced all clear claim to be judged by any other. The
sordid taint which this necessity imparted to the noblest and
the highest sorts of service was bitterly resented by
generous souls, but there was no evading it. There was no
exemption, however transcendent the quality of one's service,
from the necessity of haggling for its price in the
market-place. The physician must sell his healing and the
apostle his preaching like the rest. The prophet, who had
guessed the meaning of God, must dicker for the price of the
revelation, and the poet hawk his visions in printers' row.
If I were asked to name the most distinguishing felicity of
this age, as compared to that in which I first saw the light,
I should say that to me it seems to consist in the dignity
you have given to labor by refusing to set a price upon it
and abolishing the market-place forever. By requiring of
every man his best you have made God his task-master, and by
making honor the sole reward of achievement you have imparted
to all service the distinction peculiar in my day to the
soldier's.

CHAPTER XV.

When, in the course of our tour of inspection, we came to the library,
we succumbed to the temptation of the luxurious leather chairs with
which it was furnished, and sat down in one of the book-lined alcoves
to rest and chat awhile.[3]

"Edith tells me that you have been in the library all the morning,"
said Mrs. Leete. "Do you know, it seems to me, Mr. West, that you are
the most enviable of mortals."

"I should like to know just why," I replied.

"Because the books of the last hundred years will be new to you," she
answered. "You will have so much of the most absorbing literature to
read as to leave you scarcely time for meals these five years to come.
Ah, what would I give if I had not already read Berrian's novels."

"Or Nesmyth's, mamma," added Edith.

"Yes, or Oates' poems, or 'Past and Pr