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Self Help; Conduct and Perseverance by Samuel Smiles
page 30 of 446 (06%)
blessing: only the idler feels it to be a curse. The duty of work
is written on the thews and muscles of the limbs, the mechanism of
the hand, the nerves and lobes of the brain--the sum of whose
healthy action is satisfaction and enjoyment. In the school of
labour is taught the best practical wisdom; nor is a life of manual
employment, as we shall hereafter find, incompatible with high
mental culture.

Hugh Miller, than whom none knew better the strength and the
weakness belonging to the lot of labour, stated the result of his
experience to be, that Work, even the hardest, is full of pleasure
and materials for self-improvement. He held honest labour to be
the best of teachers, and that the school of toil is the noblest of
schools--save only the Christian one,--that it is a school in which
the ability of being useful is imparted, the spirit of independence
learnt, and the habit of persevering effort acquired. He was even
of opinion that the training of the mechanic,--by the exercise
which it gives to his observant faculties, from his daily dealing
with things actual and practical, and the close experience of life
which he acquires,--better fits him for picking his way along the
journey of life, and is more favourable to his growth as a Man,
emphatically speaking, than the training afforded by any other
condition.

The array of great names which we have already cursorily cited, of
men springing from the ranks of the industrial classes, who have
achieved distinction in various walks of life--in science,
commerce, literature, and art--shows that at all events the
difficulties interposed by poverty and labour are not
insurmountable. As respects the great contrivances and inventions
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