l talk, that makes the hush in
Chapel or where talk is anywhere; the thing that clutches the throat,
and sometimes brings the smart to the eyes--is the quality of men who
have found their work, and who have lost the love of self. They are the
conservers. They see first what is good for us to do and be. We follow
their thoughts in action afterward, as water follows the curve of a
basin. They go after the deep-down men; they dream of the shorter
passages to India; they sense the new power in the world; their faces
are turned to the East for the rising of new stars. Often they die to
make us see, but others spring to finish their work. Our hearts burn
within us when we speak of their work.

32

ASSEMBLY OF PARTS

Others have come; there are fresh wonders to me, but this book must
close.... The development of each young mind is like doing a book--each
a different book. Fascination attends the work. I assure you a teacher
gets more than he can give.... Every mill should be a school. Every
professional man should call for his own. A man's work in the world
should be judged by his constructive contacts with the young minds about
him. A man should learn the inspiration which comes in service for the
great Abstraction, the many, from which there is no answer; but he can
only become powerful and unerring by trying out the results of his
offerings face to face with his own group. It should be as natural for a
matured man to gather his mental and spiritual familiars about him as it
is for him to become the head of a domestic establishment.

There is chance for the tradesmen to turn a little from ledger and
margin, to the faces of the young about them--those who have come for
the wages of bread. Many philanthropists would carve their names on
stone, as great givers to the public. The public will not take these
things personally; the public laughs and lightly criticises. Men who
have nothing but money to give away cannot hope to receive other than
calculating looks and laughter that rings with derision.

The time will come when matters of trade in the large shall be conducted
nationally and municipally. The business of man is to produce something.
The man who produces nothing, but who sits in the midst of other men's
goods, offering them for sale at a price greater than he paid, such a
man moves in the midst of a badly-lit district of many pitfalls. It is
the same with a man at a desk, before whom pass many papers repres