of wisdom and wit, and that you think all the arts of importance.
Yet, indeed, I should think I had but little claim on your attention
if I deemed the question involved nothing save the gain of a little
more content and a little more pleasure for those who already have
abundance of content and pleasure; let me say it, that either I have
erred in the aim of my whole life, or that the welfare of these
lesser arts involves the question of the content and self-respect of
all craftsmen, whether you call them artists or artisans. So I say
again, my hope is that those who begin to consider carefully how to
make the best of the chambers in which they eat and sleep and study,
and hold converse with their friends, will breed in their minds a
wholesome and fruitful discontent with the sordidness that even when
they have done their best will surround their island of comfort, and
that as they try to appease this discontent they will find that
there is no way out of it but by insisting that all men's work shall
be fit for free men and not for machines: my extravagant hope is
that people will some day learn something of art, and so long for
more, and will find, as I have, that there is no getting it save by
the general acknowledgment of the right of every man to have fit
work to do in a beautiful home. Therein lies all that is
indestructible of the pleasure of life; no man need ask for more
than that, no man should be granted less; and if he falls short of
it, it is through waste and injustice that he is kept out of his
birthright.

And now I will try what I can do in my hints on this making the best
of it, first asking your pardon for this, that I shall have to give
a great deal of negative advice, and be always saying 'don't'--that,
as you know, being much the lot of those who profess reform.