e molding yourself into a deformity, and drifting
away from the Divine. What the world does and says about you is really no
matter, but what you think and what you do are questions vital as Fate. No
one can harm you but yourself. Work is for the worker. And so I will
answer the questions of the critics as to how society has been benefited
by, say, a William Morris book:

1. The workmen who made it found a pride and satisfaction in their work.

2. They received a goodly reward in cash for their time and efforts.

3. The buyers were pleased with their purchase, and received a decided
satisfaction in its possession.

4. Readers of the book were gratified to see their author clothed in such
fitting and harmonious dress.

5. Reading the text has instructed some, and possibly inspired a few to
nobler thinking.

After "The Defense of Guinevere" was published, it was thirteen years
before Morris issued another volume. His days had been given to art and
the work of management. But now the business had gotten on to such a firm
basis that he turned the immediate supervision over to others, and took
two days of the week, Saturday and Sunday, for literature.

Taking up the active work of literature when thirty-nine years of age, he
followed it with the zest of youth for over twenty years--until death
claimed him. William Morris thought literature should be the product of
the ripened mind--the mind that knows the world of men and which has
grappled with earth's problems. He also considered that letters should not
be a profession in itself--to make a business of an art is to degrade it.
Literature should be the spontaneous output of the mind that has known and
felt. To work the mine of spirit as a business and sift its product for
hire, is to overwork the vein and palm off slag for sterling metal.
Shakespeare was a theater-manager, Milton a secretary, Bobby Burns a
farmer, Lamb a bookkeeper, Wordsworth a government employee, Emerson a
lecturer, Hawthorne a custom-house inspector, and Whitman a clerk. William
Morris was a workingman and a manufacturer, and would have been Poet
Laureate of England had he been willing to call himself a student of
sociology instead of a socialist. Socialism itself (whatever it may be) is
not offensive--the word is.

* * * * *

The great American Apostle of Negation expressed, once upon a day, a
regret that he had not been consulted when the Universe was being planne