become so easy to do, that it seems as if there were less done,
though probably more is produced. I suppose this explains that fear,
which I hinted at just now, of a possible scarcity in work, which
perhaps you have already noticed, and which is a feeling on the
increase, and has been for a score of years."

"But do you think," said I, "that there is any fear of a work-famine
amongst you?"

"No, I do not," said he, "and I will tell why; it is each man's
business to make his own work pleasanter and pleasanter, which of
course tends towards raising the standard of excellence, as no man
enjoys turning out work which is not a credit to him, and also to
greater deliberation in turning it out; and there is such a vast
number of things which can be treated as works of art, that this
alone gives employment to a host of deft people. Again, if art be
inexhaustible, so is science also; and though it is no longer the
only innocent occupation which is thought worth an intelligent man
spending his time upon, as it once was, yet there are, and I suppose
will be, many people who are excited by its conquest of difficulties,
and care for it more than for anything else. Again, as more and more
of pleasure is imported into work, I think we shall take up kinds of
work which produce desirable wares, but which we gave up because we
could not carry them on pleasantly. Moreover, I think that it is
only in parts of Europe which are more advanced than the rest of the
world that you will hear this talk of the fear of a work-famine.
Those lands which were once the colonies of Great Britain, for
instance, and especially America--that part of it, above all, which
was once the United states--are now and will be for a long while a
great resource to us. For these lands, and, I say, especially the