. Mother
Nature was down on her knees doing her early scrubbing work! That
was yesterday: to-day, result of scrubbing-work, we have the
laughing landscape.

Now what is true of the earth is true of each man and woman on the
earth. Father and mother and the ancestors before them have done
much to bequeath those elemental qualities to us; but that which
scrubs them into us, the clinch which makes them actually ours, and
keeps them ours, and adds to them as the years go by--that depends
on our own plod, our plod in the rut, our drill of habit; in one
word, depends upon our "drudgery." It is because we have to go,
and _go_, morning after morning, through rain, through shine,
through toothache, headache, heartache, to the appointed spot, and
do the appointed work; because, and only because, we have to stick
to that work through the eight or ten hours, long after rest would
be so sweet; because the school-boy's lesson must be learned at
nine o'clock and learned without a slip; because the accounts on
the ledger must square to a cent; because the goods must tally
exactly with the invoice; because good temper must be kept with
children, customers, neighbors, not seven, but seventy times seven
times; because the besetting sin must be watched to-day, to-morrow,
and the next day; in short, without much matter _what_ our work be,
whether this or that, it is because, and only because, of the rut,
plod, grind, humdrum _in_ the work, that we at last get those
self-foundations laid of which I spoke,--attention, promptness,
accuracy, firmness, patience, self-denial, and the rest. When I
think over that list and seriously ask myself three questions, I
have to answer each with _No_:--Are there any qualities in the list
which I can afford to spare, to go without, as mere show-qualities?
Not one. Can I get these self-foundations laid, save by the weight,
year in, year out, of the steady pressures? No, there is no other
way. Is there a single one in the list which I cannot get in some
degree by undergoing the steady drills and pressures? No, not one.
Then beyond all books, beyond all class-work at the school, beyond
all special opportunities of what I call my "education," it is
this drill and pressure of my daily task that is my great
school-master. _My daily task_