Between digging a ditch to drain a meadow and composing a
sonnet, what is there in common? Nevertheless, if we look
closely into the matter, the ditch and the sonnet are much the
same thing. We might even fairly challenge that category of
“useful” and “fine.” The useful are surely fine, for nothing is
finer than use; and the fine, if they be not in a high sense
useful, are not fine after all. The ditch is dug to increase
the serviceableness to man of nature; the sonnet is composed to
enable man to discern in nature a beauty (or serviceableness)
to which he had heretofore been blind. From a broad standpoint,
there is little to choose between them. The ditch is nothing in
itself, but neither, strictly speaking, is the sonnet. They are
both means to ends. The ditch is, perhaps, more distant from
its end than the sonnet, but it is a link in the same chain.
Moreover, the ditch will always be an honest ditch, but the
sonnet may be false or artificial, and in that case counts for
nothing, or less. The real difference resides in the person
doing much more than in the thing done. A workman, building
a wall, may have a perception of the value of the use he is
performing, or he may not; only in the former case, of course,
does he deserve the name of artist. The seamstress who plies
her needle in our attic, or the poor man’s wife who must needs
wash and scrub and darn and work all day long, and from year’s
end to year’s end, if she realize the universal bearings of her
industry, is an artist, and a nobler and more adorable one than
she who sings for $5,000 a night.--_America._
(3499)
=Work and Long Life=--See INDUSTRY AND LONGEVITY.
=Work as Witness=--See TESTIMONY OF WORK.