se is but an erring, short-sighted child; the hordes
who weaken themselves in waste and indulgence are clean-hearted, since
they play fast and loose with what is in a sense their own property--but
the efficiency system which uses men this way, is a slayer of more than
mind and body. It commits the psychological crime.

* * * * *

A man who has nothing but money to give is bound to be vulgar; and he is
never so vulgar as when he thinks he can pay in money for a fine task
well done. The man who does an excellent bit of production from his own
centres of being, puts his enduring self in it--a self said to be
fashioned not of clay. I repeat his work can only be paid for in kind.
You cannot buy any bit of fine spirit with money, no gift of love or
friendship, no turning toward you of any creative force. That which goes
to you for a price, is of the dimension of the price--matter yields unto
you matter. You can only purchase a fine instrument, or a fine horse, or
the love of woman or child, by presenting a surface that answers. You
possess them in so far as you liberate their secrets of expression.

I moved with a rich man about an estate which he had bought--and he
didn't know the dogwood from the beech. I doubt if he saw anything but
bark and green, shade and sun--a kind of twilight curtain dropped before
his eyes. There was a low hill with a mass of stones grouped on top.

"I shall have those taken away," he said idly.

"Why?"

"Why, they're just stones----"

I didn't answer.... He wouldn't have believed me, nor possibly his
landscape gardener. He couldn't see through the twilight curtain the
bleach or the tan of the rock pile, its natural balance--that it was a
challenge to a painter. The place would be all hedged and efficient
presently. He spoiled everything; yet he would have known how to deal
with you had you brought to him a commercial transaction--the rest of
his surfaces were covered in a thick, leathery coat, very valuable in a
septic-tank where air and light must be excluded.... This man had
another country estate in the East and still another in the South. I
would point out merely that he did not truly own them.

Rather it would seem that one must spend years to be worthy of communion
with one hillside of dogwood. According to what you can receive of any
beauty, is the measure of your worthiness.

I remember my first adventure with a player-piano. I was conscious of
two d