om bad habits, than from the amount of work done. Absolutely this
is true if a man's work is his own peculiar task, for the work a man
loves replenishes.

Desire tears down tissue. There is no pain more subtle and terrifying
than to want something with fury. To the one who is caught in the rhythm
of his task, who can lose himself in it, even the processes which so
continually tear down the body are suspended. In fact, if we could hold
this rhythm, we could not die.

This is what I would tell you: Rhythm of work is joy. This is the full
exercise--soul and brain and body in one. Time does not enter; the self
does not enter; all forces of beautifying play upon the life. There is a
song from it--that some time all shall hear, the song that mystics have
heard from the bees, and from open nature at sunrise, and from all
selfless productivity.

One cannot play until one has worked--that is the whole truth. Ask that
restless child to put a room in order, to cleanse a hard-wood floor, to
polish the bath fixtures. Give him the ideal of cool, flyless
cleanliness in a room. Hold the picture of what you want in mind and
detail it to him, saying that you will come again and inspect his work.
Watch, if you care, the mystery of it. There will be silence until the
thing begins to unfold for him--until the polish comes to wood or metal,
until the thing begins to answer and the picture of completion bursts
upon him. Then you will hear a whistle or a hum, and nothing will break
his theme until the end.

The ideal is everything. You may impress upon him that the light falls
differently upon clean things, that the odour is sweet from clean
things; that the hand delights to touch them, that the heart is rested
when one enters a clean room, because its order is soothing.... It isn't
the room, after all, that gets all the order and cleansing. The whistle
or the hum comes from harmony within.

A man who drank intolerably on occasion told me that the way he "climbed
out" was to get to cleaning something; that his thoughts freshened up
when he had some new surface to put on an object. He meant that the
order came to his chaos, and the influx of life began to cleanse away
the litter of burned tissue and the debris of debauch. One cannot keep
on thinking evil thoughts while he makes a floor or a gun or a field
clean. The thing is well known in naval and military service where
bodies of men are kept in order by continual polishing of brasses and