CHAPTER VIII.


AT WORK.

Walter found that compulsory employment, while taking from, his time for
genial labor, quickened his desire after it, increased his faculty for
it, and made him more careful of his precious hours of leisure. Life,
too, had now an interest greater than before; and almost as soon as
anxiety gave place, the impulse to utterance began again to urge him.
What this impulse is, who can define, or who can trace its origin? The
result of it in Walter's case was ordered words, or, conventionally,
poetry. Seldom is such a result of any value, but the process is for the
man invaluable: it remained to be seen whether in Walter it was for
others as well as himself.

He became rapidly capable of better work. His duty was drudgery, but
drudgery well encountered will reveal itself as of potent and precious
reaction, both intellectual and moral. One incapable of drudgery can not
be capable of the finest work. Many a man may do many things well, and
be far from reception into the most ancient guild of workers.

Walter labored with conscience and diligence, and brought his good taste
to tell on the quality of his drudgery. He is a contemptible workman who
thinks of his claims before his duties, of his poor wages instead of his
undertaken work. There was a strong sense of fairness in Walter; he saw
the meanness of pocketing the poorest without giving good work in
return; he saw that its own badness, and nothing else, makes any work
mean--and the workman with it. That he believed himself capable of
higher work was the worst of reasons for not giving money's worth for