delight in her new
pursuit made her think it right to limit her indulgence in it. Duty
she conceived to be a painful effort necessarily, but writing was a
pleasure; she therefore attended first conscientiously to her
embroidery, and any other task she thought it right to perform,
although her eager impatience to get back to her desk made each in
turn a toil to her. Like many another earnest person, she mistook the
things of no importance for things that matter because the doing of
them cost her much; and it was the intellectual exercise, the delicate
fancy work of her brain, a matter of enormous consequence, that she
neglected. Not knowing that "_If a man love the labour of any trade,
apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called
him_," she made the fitting of herself for the work of her life her
last exercise at the tired end of the day. She rose early and went to
bed late in order to gain a little more time to write, but never
suspected that her delight in the effort to find expression for what
was in her mind of itself proclaimed her one of the elect.

When she had finished her embroidery, she despatched it secretly to
the depot in London; but then she found that she would have to pay a
small subscription before she could have it sold there, and she had no
money. She wrote boldly to the secretary and told her so, and asked if
the subscription could not be paid out of the price she got for her
work. The secretary replied that it was contrary to the rules, but the
committee thought that such an artistically beautiful design as hers
was sure to be snapped up directly, and they had therefore decided to
make an exception in her case.

While these letters were going backwards and forwards, Beth suffered
agonies of anxiety lest Dan should pounce upon them and discover her
secret; but he happened to be out always at post-time just then, so
she managed to secure them safely.

As she had no money, she could not buy any more materials for
embroidery, so she was obliged to take a holiday, the greater part of
which she spent in writing. She was deeply engrossed by thoughts on
progress, which had been suggested by a passage in one of Emerson's
essays: "_All conservatives are such from natural defects. They have
been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through
luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the
defensive._" Even in her own little life Beth had seen so much of