scope and application. For no man can be honest who does not work.
Service for service. If the farmer buys corn, and the labourer
ploughs and reaps, and the baker sweats in his hot bakery, plainly
you who eat must do something in your turn. It is not enough to
take off your hat, or to thank God upon your knees for the
admirable constitution of society and your own convenient situation
in its upper and more ornamental stories. Neither is it enough to
buy the loaf with a sixpence; for then you are only changing the
point of the inquiry; and you must first have BOUGHT THE SIXPENCE.
Service for service: how have you bought your sixpences? A man of
spirit desires certainty in a thing of such a nature; he must see
to it that there is some reciprocity between him and mankind; that
he pays his expenditure in service; that he has not a lion's share
in profit and a drone's in labour; and is not a sleeping partner
and mere costly incubus on the great mercantile concern of mankind.

Services differ so widely with different gifts, and some are so
inappreciable to external tests, that this is not only a matter for
the private conscience, but one which even there must be leniently
and trustfully considered. For remember how many serve mankind who
do no more than meditate; and how many are precious to their
friends for no more than a sweet and joyous temper. To perform the
function of a man of letters it is not necessary to write; nay, it
is perhaps better to be a living book. So long as we love we
serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that
we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.
The true services of life are inestimable in money, and are never
paid. Kind words and caresses, high and wise thoughts, humane
designs, tender behaviour to the weak and suffering, and all the
charities of man's existence, are neither bought nor sold.