reminded that the good old word originally had to
do with workmanship and not with dollar-piling.... The world is crowded
with bad workmen. Much of its misery and cruelty is the result of bad
workmanship, which in its turn results from the lack of imagination. A
man builds his character in his work; through character alone is the
stamina furnished to withstand with dignity the heavy pressures of life.

... I arranged with a neighbour to do some work for me. In fact he asked
for the work, and promised to come the next Tuesday. He did not appear.
Toward the end of the week following I passed him in the lane that leads
down to the Lake--a tall, tired man, sitting beside a huge stone, his
back against a Lombard poplar, a shotgun across his knees.

"I thought I'd wait here, and see if I couldn't hit one of them geese,"
he explained, as I came up.

It seemed I had never seen such a tired face. His eyes were burning like
the eyes of a sentry, long unrelieved, at the outpost of a city.... The
geese ride at mooring out in the Lake at night. I have fallen asleep
listening to their talk far out in the dark. But I have never seen them
fly overland before sunset, which was two hours away at the time I
passed up the lane. I do not know how long Monte had been sitting there.

Now except for the triviality of the promise, I had no objection to his
not working for me, and no objection to his feeding his family, thus
first-handed, though very little breast of the game wild goose comes to
the board of such as he.... I was on the way to the forge of a workman.
I wanted a knocker for an oaken door; and I wanted it just so. Moreover,
I knew the man who would make it for me.

At the head of the lane, still on the way, I met a farmer, who had not
missed the figure propped between the stone and the poplar tree. He said
that the last time Monte had borrowed his gun, he had brought it back
fouled. That was all he said.

I passed Monte's house, which is the shocking depression of a prosperous
community. There were many children--a stilled and staring lot. They
sat in dust upon the ground. They were not waiting for goose. Their
father had never inspired them with expectancy of any sort; their mother
would have spoiled a goose, had it been brought by a neighbour. She came
to the door as I passed, spilled kitchen refuse over the edge of the
door-stone, and vanished. The children seemed waiting for death. The
virtue of fatherhood is not to be mea