, whatever it be--_that is what
mainly educates me_. All other culture is mere luxury compared with
what that gives. That gives the indispensables. Yet fool that I am,
this pressure of my daily task is the very thing that I so growl at
as my "drudgery"!

We can add right here this fact, and practically it is a very
important fact to girls and boys as ambitious as they ought to
be,---the higher our ideals, the _more_ we need those foundation
habits strong. The street-cleaner can better afford to drink and
laze than he who would make good shoes; and to make good shoes
takes less force of character and brain than to make cures in the
sick-room, or laws in the legislature, or children in the nursery.
The man who makes the head of a pin or the split of a pen all day
long, and the man who must put fresh thought into his work at every
stroke,--which of the two more needs the self-control, the method,
the accuracy, the power of attention and concentration? Do you sigh
for books and leisure and wealth? It takes more "concentration" to
use books--head tools--well than to use hand tools. It takes more
"self-control" to use leisure well than workdays. Compare the
Sundays and Mondays of your city; which day, all things considered,
stands for the city's higher life,--the day on which so many men
are lolling, or the day on which all toil? It takes more knowledge,
more integrity, more justice, to handle riches well than to bear
the healthy pinch of the just-enough.

Do you think that the great and famous escape drudgery? The native
power and temperament, the outfit and capital at birth, counts for
much, but it convicts us common minds of huge mistake to hear the
uniform testimony of the more successful geniuses about their
genius. "Genius is patience," said who? Sir Isaac Newton. "The
Prime Minister's secret is patience," said who? Mr. Pitt, the great
Prime Minister of England. Who, think you, wrote, "My imagination
would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of
commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention"?
It was Charles Dickens. Who said "The secret of a Wall Street
million is common honesty"? Vanderbilt; and he added as the recipe
for a million (I know somebody would like to learn it), "Never use
what is not your own, neve