oes so with the hope
of obtaining a reward exceedingly great in the life to come. And
even if there were no life to come, his present life is happier far
than that of the man who grabs at all the wealth he can get until he
drops into the grave. The man who works "all for love and nothing
for reward" is a being incomprehensible to us ordinary mortals; he is
an angel, and if ever he was a candidate for a seat in Parliament he
was not elected. Even love--"which rules the court, the camp, the
grove"--is given only with the hope of a return of love; for
hopeless love is nothing but hopeless misery.

I once hired an old convict as gardener at five shillings a day. He
began to work in the morning with a great show of diligence while I
was looking on. But on my return home in the evening it was
wonderful to find how little work he had contrived to get through
during the day; so I began to watch him. His systematic way of doing
nothing would have been very amusing if it cost nothing. He pressed
his spade into the ground with his boot as slowly as possible, lifted
the sod very gently, and turned it over. Then he straightened his
back, looked at the ground to the right, then to the left, then in
front of him, and then cast his eyes along the garden fence. Having
satisfied himself that nothing particular was happening anywhere
within view, he gazed awhile at the sod he had turned over, and then
shaved the top off with his spade. Having straightened his back once
more, he began a survey of the superficial area of the next sod, and
at length proceeded to cut it in the same deliberate manner,
performing the same succeeding ceremonies. If he saw me, or heard me
approaching, he became at once very alert and diligent until I spoke
to him, then he stopped work at once. It was quite impossible for
him both to labour and to listen; nobody can do two things well at
the same time. But his greatest relief was in talking; he would
talk with anybody all day long if possible, and do nothing else; his
wages, of course, still running on. There is very little talk worth
paying for. I would rather give some of my best friends a fee to be
silent, than pay for anything they have to tell me. My gardener was
a most unprofitable servant; the only good I got out of him was a
clear knowledge of what the Government stroke meant, and the
knowledge was not worth the expense. He was in other respects
harmless and useless, and, although he had