she deserved great praise. But
in her case this was the best work open to her. She was a hopelessly
dull scholar, and she was awkward with her needle. Nor did she have the
kind of mind necessary to direct others. She could not have conducted a
boarding-house. She could, however, do her own little bit of work well.
Now what was fine in her would not have been fine in the teacher. To be
sure, it is a pity to teach if one hates it, more of a pity than to do
some mechanical work, because there is danger that the feeling may react
upon the scholars. Still, this woman had the necessary self-control to
do this good work. On the other hand, she was not attracted to any
inferior work for its own sake. She would have made an excellent
duchess. Her talents as well as her tastes fitted her for such a life.
But she had to earn her living, and so far as she or her friends could
see there was no direction in which she could work without finding it
intolerable. And so it seems to me she did right to choose the best work
open to her and do it as well as she could, and I think if she had
forsaken the school-room for the restaurant she would not have done what
was best either for herself or for others.

I have known an ignorant woman who kept a lodging-house with such
devotion that it was like a work of art. Its purity and freshness, its
warmth and light had a charm beyond that of comfort. Such work is to be
done, and it is not often done well, because the woman who does it is
below rather than above her task. "Let the great soul incarnated in some
woman's form, poor and sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to
service, and sweep chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent day
beams cannot be muffled or hid, but to sweep and scour will instantly
appear supreme and beautiful actions, the top and radiance of human
life, and all people will get mops and brooms; until lo, suddenly the
great soul has enshrined itself in some other form and done some other
deed, and that is now the flower and head of all living nature."

The lower work must be done, and often by the highest natures. It must
then be done willingly and with a recognition that it can be made a work
of art. But it should be deliberately chosen only by those to whom it is
the highest work. I have in mind a young man who might have been a
musician, but he would not practice, so he became a shoemaker. He had to
work harder as a shoemaker than he would have done as a musician,