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 15

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.[1]

"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 Present,' or, 'In the Beginning,'
or--oh, I could name a dozen books, each worth a year of one's life,"
declared Mrs. Leete, enthusiastica