Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/189

THE GOSPEL OF INFINITE PAINS part which makes laws unto itself. But the craftsmanship is a different matter. It may be congenial labour, but labour it must always be, differing in kind but not in degree from that of the hewer of wood or the tiller of the field. The great thing is to make it honest labour, to be quite sure that we are not skimping it or doing it grudgingly. We must each of us find our own best working hours, must decide for ourselves whether we will sit thirty hours at a stretch without moving, and then do nothing more for a week, or whether we will accept the monotony of systematic daily effort from breakfast until luncheon, day in and day out, whether we feel like it or not. Some men can work that way, and some men cannot: and that is all there is about it; they cannot tell you why, they simply find that that is their individual case. Now, there is no virtue in one way more than in another—but whatever [175]