these vows which I shall enumerate, embody some of the ideals that
govern the work of that craft.


II

And the first of these vows I shall call, for want of a better term, the
vow of "artistry,"--the pledge that the initiate takes to do the work
that his hand finds to do in the best possible manner, without reference
to the effort that it may cost or to the reward that it may or may not
bring.

I call this the vow of artistry because it represents the essential
attitude of the artist toward his work. The cynic tells us that ideals
are illusions of youth, and yet, the other day I saw expressed in a
middle-aged working-man a type of idealism that is not at all uncommon
in this world. He was a house painter; his task was simply the prosaic
job of painting a door; and yet, from the pains which he took with that
work, an observer would have concluded that it was, to the painter, the
most important task in the world. And that, after all, is the true test
of craft artistry: to the true craftsman the work that he is doing must
be the most important thing that can be done. One of the best teachers
that I know is that kind of a craftsman in education. A student was once
sent to observe his work. He was giving a lesson upon the "attribute
complement" to an eighth-grade grammar class. I asked the student
afterward what she had got from her visit. "Why," she replied, "that man
taught as if the very greatest achievement in life would be to get his
pupils to understand the attribute complement,--and when he had
finished, they did understand it."