the labor of the lowliest. Michael Angelo could plan a St. Peter's; but
the men who climbed up with wood and stone--"the hewers of wood and the
drawers of water"--were necessary to its construction. Genius is a slave
to labor. Says Smiles, in his work on "Thrift," "Genius is but a
capability of laboring intensely"; making, you see, even talent itself,
and its highest expression, an outgrowth of work.

No simplest task we do but is essential to somebody. Slight it, shirk
it, scorn it, and somebody suffers. Leave the parlor undusted, and
callers are sure to come. Wear a stocking with a hole in it, you will
find it necessary to take your boot off before night. There is the
greatest need among girls of a more entire consecration to certain
humble, homely, housewifely duties. The wearing torment of discontent
with unassuming work arises not from lack of ambition, but from scorn
of what one has to do. I sometimes think this reaching out after the
unattainable is worse for a girl than passive indifference to what
she might acquire. A large part of the success a person achieves is
dependent upon her thinking her calling the very best in the world.
It is not the work which dignifies you: it is you who dignify the work.

The girl who wins honor in medicine, in literature, in music, in
engineering, in astronomy, in laundry-work, in cookery, in needle-work,
ennobles literature, or music, or science, or housekeeping. What worthy
pursuit can you not, by excellence, raise into honor and esteem? Matilda
of Normandy embroidered, in the quiet of her castle, stitch by stitch,
and day after day, the battle of Hastings, at which the Conqueror won.
When that great mingling of Normans and Saxons proved to be the
important and the last step in the making of England, men looked back
to the battle which decided the Norman Conquest, and, lacking needed
information from chronicles, turned to the work of Matilda. There,