vention placards them plainly enough, but convention
does not make virtue vice, nor vice virtue. There are deeper laws down
beneath, and sometimes they may set at defiance all accepted codes.

"Yet I would not quarrel with the accepted codes--until I knew I had
something better. Accepted codes represent man's net progress through
experience to truth. The code, for instance, 'Thou shalt not kill;' we
accept it in general, but not completely. The State does not hesitate
to kill in self-defence, or even to carry out purposes which have no
relation to defence. And shall we not allow similar exceptions to the
other codes? And yet, although we may find our codes are not
infallible, are they not still the best guides we have?

"To return to clothes. Clothes won't make you, but they will help you
to make yourself. Only, don't become a clothes-tippler. You can run
to intoxication on fine raiment as well as on fine wines. It has
virtue in it, but just beyond the virtue lies the vice."

CHAPTER EIGHT

The summer was not far gone when Dave, through an introduction
furnished by Mr. Duncan, got a new job. It was in the warehouse of a
wholesale grocery, trundling cases and sacks of merchandise. It was
cleaner than handling coal, and the surroundings were more congenial,
and the wages were better--fifty dollars a month, to begin.

"The first thing is to get out of the dead-line," said Mr. Duncan. "I
am not hoping that you will have found destiny in a wholesale
warehouse, but you must get out of the dead-line. As long as you
shovel coal, you will shovel coal. And you are not capable of anything
better until you think you are."

"But I've liked it pretty well," said Dave. "As long as I was just
working for my wages it was dull going, but it was different after I
got to see that even shovelling coal was worth while. I suppose it is
the same with groceries, or whatever one does. As soon as you begin to
study what you handle the work loses its drudgery. It isn't a man's
job that makes him sick of his job; it's what he thinks of his job."

A light of satisfaction was in his teacher's eyes as Dave made this
answer. Mr. Duncan had realized that he was starting late with this
pupil, and if there were any short-cuts to education he must find them.
So he had set out deliberately to instil the idea that education is not
a matter of schools and colleges, or courses of reading, or formulae of
any kind, but a matter o