much busier life than I had ever lived. I had never worked so hard,
and yet there was not a single part of my work that did not add to my
delight. And I worked for direct results, for things I could see, and
things which I might justly claim as my own, since I had created them.

I shall perhaps fall under the suspicion of morbid sensitiveness when I
confess that I never took my weekly wage in London without a qualm and
a compunction, for I could never make myself believe that I had really
earned it. What had I done? I had simply performed a few arithmetical
processes which any schoolboy might have done as well. My labour, such
as it was, was absorbed instantly in the commercial operations of a
great firm. I could not trace it, and I had no means of estimating its
value. The money I took for it seemed therefore to come to me by a
sort of legerdemain. That some one thought it worth while to pay me
was ostensible proof that my work was really worth something; but so
little able was I to penetrate the processes that resulted in this
judgment, so vivid was the sense of some ingenious jugglery in the
whole business, that I did not know whether I had been cheated or was a
cheat, in living by a kind of labour that cost me so little. How
different was my feeling now! At the end of an hour's spade-work, I
saw something actually done, of which I was the indisputable author.
When I laid down the saw and plane and hammer, and stretched my aching
back, I saw something growing into shape, which I myself had created.
There was no jugglery about this; there was immediate intimate relation
between cause and effect. And thence I found a kind of joy in my work,
which was new and exquisite to me. I stood upon my own feet,
self-possessed, self-respecting, efficient for my own needs, and
conscious of a definite part in the great rhythm of infinite toil which
makes the universe. It is only when a man works for himself that this
kind of joy is felt. So enamoured was I of this new joy, that had it