he lived it. He found the secret of blessedness, if
not of happiness. At his bench, he integrated the life that lasts. He
could have told you in the early years, if the world had not laughed. He
would have learned himself more swiftly, had he been encouraged to tell,
as he toiled--if the world had not shamed away the few who were drawn to
his bench.

But alone, he got it all at last--the passion and power of the spiritual
workman which sustains him now, though his body has lain under the hill
for fifty years. His shop is the place of a greater transaction than his
task. The breadth and essence of it that lingers makes it a sacred place
to the few who would take off their shoes to enter--were it not for the
misunderstanding of the world.

Out of the artificial he became natural; out of the workman, he emerged
a man, a living soul.

I would support every plan or dream of education, and none other, that
seeks to find for the youth his life work. I would call upon every
workman personally to help; and urge for every community, the goodness
of its products and not the richness of its markets. I would put the
world's premium upon fine workmanship of the hand or brain or spirit;
and a stiff pressure upon the multiplication of these products by
mechanical means, for we have too many common things, and so few fine
things. I would inculcate in the educational ideal, first of all, that
in every man there is a dream, just as there is a soul, and that _to
express the dream of the soul in matter_ is the perfect individual
performance. I would impress upon the youth that in all arts and crafts,
the dream fades and the spirit of the product dies away, when many are
made in the original likeness. Nature does not make duplicates; her
creative hallmark is upon every leaf and bee; upon every cliff and cloud
and star.

I would not endow the young workman while he is learning his trade or
art; but I would have the State intensely watchful of him, and
impassioned with parental conviction that her greatness is inseparable
with his possibilities of achievement. I would not make his ways short,
but despise and crush all evidences of facility. I would keep him plain
and lean and fit, and make him earn his peace. All fine work comes from
the cultivation of the self, not from cultivated environment.... I
dreamed for twenty years of a silent room and an open wood fire. I shall
never cease to wonder at the marvel of it, now that it has come. It i