full value to society. But for various reasons mortals go into work for other than the imperative reason of calling: because the business was handed down from father to son; because a stern necessity of self-support demanded that the first work that came to hand should be done; or, again, because the rewards were so glittering that repugnance was overcome. And yet, surely, all men and women should be doing the manner of work most to their liking, most expressive of their personality; the one thing they were born to do, and therefore can do happily and do best.

Parents have a terrible responsibility here, and too often misconceive it, when they compel their young ones to take up some form of activity not suited to their powers. It would be well to understand that, whenever serious-minded, well-meaning young persons have a deep conviction that a certain sort of work calls them, they should be allowed to give it a trial. By doing so, either they find that it is their true occupation, or not, and so, satisfied, turn to other work. But if they do not give it a trial, they will be dissatisfied to their death-day. The beginning and basis of the right kind of life, then, is choosing wisely one's work. The world has no use for misfits, and the misfits are unhappy, poor creatures, when half the time it is not altogether their fault, but the fault of their environment or necessity.

Think, also, of the immense number of human beings who work under the wrong conditions: hours overlong, work-places lacking air and light, needless harshness, even cruelty, of employers, the nature of the toil brutalizing and demoralizing. The figures would sadden, and the facts appal, could they be comprehended to their full extent. It was with this abuse of work, as it touched the children, in mind that great-hearted Mrs. Browning, half a century ago, wrote that piercing Cry of the Children which, in its white-hot passion of loving sorrow, was one of the documents of the day, and led on to our own, when industrial conditions are being bettered.

Do you hear the children weeping and disproving,
O my brothers, what ye preach?

For God's possible is taught by His world's loving,
And the children doubt of each.

Even when the physical conditions that surround the work are endurable or pleasant, that work is not what it should be that lacks

a sense of aim and accomplishment. It is better to make something one can take a pleasure in the making of; but how seldom is that true of the worker! Grant, with the old poet, that to sweep a room in the right spirit "makes that and the action fine"; still, to be honest, there is work and work, and it is hard to see how the labor of a man in the stockyards, in whatever spirit done, can give that inward satisfaction which ought to come from every kind of human labor, no matter how fruitless or lowly.

A special danger has arisen from the modern differentiation of work, for the reason that, where once the head, hand, and heart collaborated in a trinity of activity to the making of a seemly whole, now, with the advent of machinery, the labor has largely become partial, blind, and so pleasureless. To make a pin may not be esthetic work, but it is much better than to make the head of a pin, because in the former case you are at least intelligently producing something of wholeness and usefulness. Manhood and womanhood should be retained in the work, but to make the head of a pin has the tendency to make a machine out of a human being; it is not a finished product, but merely part of the process of its making.

It is a satire to talk about pleasure in one's work under some conditions. The present-day handicraft movement is a reaction to the better conditions of work in an age past when the artisan, the workman, was also the artist, having joy of his labor, and so preserving his humanity. Doutbless, we shall gradually so alter the social wrongs and evils which now make this planet appear a little damaged, and install the worker in work so congenial, so close-fitted to his aptitude and desire, that it will be his deepest satisfaction and most lasting solace: that which steadies, rectifies, uplifts, and rejoices him throughout his days and up to the final rest. Nay, are we not altering our conceptions of Heaven in order to allow of happy, useful, unselfish work there-work, instead of the older notion of sitting around in an elegant leisure enlivened by select music?

Work, ideally, should be congenial, fruitful, and the worker aware of his worth to the world. Nobody works harder than the idler; he has on his hands the dire task of killing time. Knowing the awfulness of vacuity, he fills the day with a semblance of activity, while gnawing at his peace is a sense of the barren folly of it all. The finest argument for real work is the spectacle of its counterfeit presentment.

THE MAIL-ORDER HOUSE

BY ARNOLD BENNETT

THERE are business organizations in America of a species which do not flourish at all in Europe. For example, the "mail-order house," whose secrets were very generously displayed to me in Chicago a peculiar establishment which sells nearly everything (except patent-medicines)-on condition that you order it by post. Go into that house with money in your palm, and ask for a fan or a flail or a fur-coat or a fountain-pen or a fiddle, and you will be requested to return home and write a letter about the proposed purchase, and stamp the letter and drop it into a mail-box, and then wait till the article arrives at your door. That house is one of the most spectacular and pleasing proofs that the inhabitants of the United States are thinly scattered over an enormous area, in tiny groups, often quite isolated from stores. On the day of my visit sixty thousand letters had been received, and every executable order contained in these was executed before closing time, by the coördinated efforts of over four thousand female employees and over three thousand males. The conception would make Europe dizzy. Imagine a merchant in Moscow trying to inaugurate such a scheme!

A little machine no bigger than a soup-plate will open hundreds of envelopes at once. They are all the same, those envelopes; they have even less individuality than sheep being sheared, but when the contents of one-any one at random-are put into your hand, something human and distinctive is put into your hand. I read the caligraphy on a blue sheet of paper, and it was written by a woman in Wyoming, a neat, earnest, harassed, and possibly rather harassing woman, and she wanted all sorts of things and wanted them intensely -I could see that with clearness. This complex purchase was an important event in her year. So far as her imagination went, only one mail-order would reach the Chicago house that morning, and the entire establishment would be strained to meet it.

Then the blue sheet was taken from me and thrust into the system, and therein lost to me. I was taken to a mysteriously rumbling shaft of broad diameter, that pierced all the floors of the house and