I myself am neither sorry nor ashamed for this; I am glad and
proud to be of those who eat their bread in the sweat of their
own brows, and not the sweat of other men's brows; I think my
bread is the sweeter for it. In the meantime I have no blame for
business men; they are no more of the condition of things than we
workingmen are; they did no more to cause it or create it; but I
would rather be in my place than in theirs, and I wish that I
could make all my fellow-artists realize that economically they
are the same as mechanics, farmers, day-laborers. It ought to be
our glory that we produce something, that we bring into the world
something that was not choately there before; that at least we
fashion or shape something anew; and we ought to feel the tie
that binds us to all the toilers of the shop and field, not as a
galling chain, but as a mystic bond also uniting us to Him who
works hitherto and evermore.

I know very well that to the vast multitude of our
fellow-workingmen we artists are the shadows of names, or not
even the shadows. I like to look the facts in the face, for
though their lineaments are often terrible, yet there is light
nowhere else; and I will not pretend, in this light, that the
masses care any more for us than we care for the masses, or so
much. Nevertheless, and most distinctly, we are not of the
classes. Except in our work, they have no use for us; if now and
then they fancy qualifying their material splendor or their
spiritual dulness with some artistic presence, the attempt is
always a failure that bruises and abashes. In so far as the
artist is a man of the world, he is the less an artist, and if he
fashions himself upon fashion, he deforms his art. We all know