A professor in the small college of Slimsalaryville tells in a recent
magazine of his long hair and no dress suit, and of his wife's doing
the washing in order that they might have bread and the "Eugenic
Review" on a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year. It is a sad
story, in the midst of which he exclaims: "I may even get to the place
where I can _spare time_ (italics mine) to keep chickens or a cow, and
that would help immensely; but I am so constituted that chickens or a
cow would certainly cripple my work." How cripple it? Is n't it his
work to _teach_? Far from it. "Let there be light," he says at the
end of the essay, is his work, and he adds that he has been so busy
with it that he is on the verge of a nervous break-down. Of course he
is. Who would n't be with that job? And of course he has n't a
constitution for chickens and a cow. But neither does he seem to have
constitution enough for the light-giving either, being ready to
collapse from his continuous shining.

But isn't this the case with many of us? Aren't we overworking--doing
our own simple job of teaching and, besides that, taking upon ourselves
the Lord's work of letting there be light?

I have come to the conclusion that there might not be any less light
were the Lord allowed to do his own shining, and that probably there
might be quite as good teaching if the teacher stuck humbly to his
desk, and after school kept chickens and a cow. The egg-money and
cream "would help immensely," even the Professor admits, the
Professor's wife fully concurring no doubt.

Don't we all take ourselves a little seriously--we college professors
and others? As if the Lord could not continue to look after his light,