Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/229

Rh always accentuated the poetic relation between the workman and his work. In "A Week" he wrote with poetic thought,—"Behind every man's busyness there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and industry, as within the reef encircling a coral isle there is always an expanse of still water, where the depositions are going on which will finally raise it above the surface." With despair, to-day, one recalls his maxim,—"Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love and pay him well." Work to him, as to Carlyle, was a religion. It must be performed faithfully, however slight; "drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction." Joy and faithfulness always coalesced in his work. He took pride in having the timbers of the Walden lodge well mortised and tenoned. The famous little study which Alcott tried to construct for Emerson, in the latter's garden, was a source of annoyed amusement to Thoreau because of its lack of perspective and the impractical upward curve of the eaves and moss-lined roof. It soon merited the name, "The Ruin," given to it by Madam Emerson. We are told that Thoreau drove the nails, and their security was in sharp contrast with the fairy-like structure of the roof.