as rapidly as possible to the plane of automatism and
dismissed from the mind. I believe that you will outgrow this notion. As
you go on with your work, as you increase in skill, ever and ever the
fascination of its technique will take a stronger and stronger hold upon
you. This is the great saving principle of our workaday life. This is
the factor that keeps the toiler free from the deadening effects of
mechanical routine. It is the factor that keeps the farmer at his plow,
the artisan at his bench, the lawyer at his desk, the artist at his
palette.

I once worked for a man who had accumulated a large fortune. At the age
of seventy-five he divided this fortune among his children, intending to
retire; but he could find pleasure and comfort only in the routine of
business. In six months he was back in his office. He borrowed
twenty-five thousand dollars on his past reputation and started in to
have some fun. I was his only employee at the time, and I sat across the
big double desk from him, writing his letters and keeping his accounts.
He would sit for hours, planning for the establishment of some industry
or running out the lines that would entangle some old adversary. I did
not stay with him very long, but before I left, he had a half-dozen
thriving industries on his hands, and when he died three years later he
had accumulated another fortune of over a million dollars.

That is an example of what I mean by the fascination that the technique
of one's craft may come to possess. It is the joy of doing well the work
that you know how to do. The finer points of technique,--those little
things that seem so trivial in themselves and yet which mean everything
to skill and efficiency,--what pride the competent artisan or the master
artist takes in these! How he delights to revel in the jargon of his
craft! How he prides himself in possessing the knowledge and the
technical skill that are denied the layman!

I am aware that I am somewhat unorthodox in urging this view of your
work upon you. Teachers have been encouraged to believe that details are
not only unimportant but stultifying,--that teaching ability is a
function of personality, and not a product of a technique that must be
acquired through the strenuous discipline of experience. One of the most
skillful teachers of my acquaintance is a woman down in the grades. I
have watched her work for days at a time, striving to learn its secret.
I can find nothing there that is