There is endless backwoodsman's work yet to be done. If "those also
serve who only stand and wait," still more do those who sweep and
cleanse; and if any man elect to give his strength to the weeder's and
scavenger's occupation, I remain of the opinion that his service should
be counted acceptable, and that no one has a right to ask more of him
than faithful performance of the duties he has undertaken. I venture to
count it an improbable suggestion that any such person--a man, let us
say, who has well-nigh reached his threescore years and ten, and has
graduated in all the faculties of human relationships; who has taken his
share in all the deep joys and deeper anxieties which cling about them;
who has felt the burden of young; lives entrusted to his care, and has
stood alone with his dead before the abyss of the eternal--has never had
a thought beyond negative criticism. It seems to me incredible that such
an one can have done his day's work, always with a light heart, with
no sense of responsibility, no terror of that which may appear when the
factitious veil of Isis--the thick web of fiction man has woven round
nature--is stripped off.