illustration between his week and his Sunday, and the one
strengthening the other, as all true outward work does harmonize
with and show forth, and help the spiritual doing. It could not have
been so with that gold work, or any little feverish hitching on to
other men's business; producing nothing, advancing nothing, only
standing between to snatch what might fall, or to keep a premium for
passing from hand to hand.
Our great cities are so full,--our whole country is so
overrun,--with these officious middle-men whom the world does not
truly want; chiffonniers of trade, who only pick up a living out of
the great press and waste and overflow; and our boys are so eager to
slip in to some such easy, ready-made opportunity,--to get some
crossing to sweep.
What will come of it all, as the pretenses multiply? Will there be
always pennies for every little broom? Will two, and three, and six
sweeps be tolerated between side and side? By and by, I think, they
will have to turn to and lay pavements. Hard, honest work, and the
day's pay for it; that is what we have got to go back to; that and
the day's snug, patient living, which the pay achieves.
Then, as I say, the week shall illustrate the Sunday, and the Sunday
shall glorify the week; and what men do and build shall stand true
types, again, for the inner growth and the invisible building; so
that if this outer tabernacle were dissolved, there should be seen
glorious behind it, the house not made with hands,--eternal.
As Desire Ledwith met this young Kenneth Kincaid from day to day,
seeing him so often at her Aunt Ripwinkley's, where he and Dorris
went in and out now, almost like a son and daughter,--as she walked
beside him this morning, hearing him say these things, at which
the heart-longing in her burned anew toward the real and
satisfying,--what wonder was it that her restlessness grasped at
that in his life which was strong and full of rest; that she felt
glad and proud to have him tell his thought to her; that without any
silliness,--despising all silliness,--she should yet be conscious,
as girls of seventeen are conscious, of something that made her day
sufficient when she had so met him,--of a temptation to turn into
those streets in her walks that led his way? Or that she often, with
her blunt truth, toward herself as well as others, and her quick
contempt of sham and subterfuge, should snub herself mentally, and
turn herself round as by a grasp of her own sh
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