Thus he learned to
make lead-pencils, and, when he had gained the best
certificate and his friends began to congratulate him on his
establishment in life, calmly announced that he should never
make another. "Why should I?" said he "I would not do again
what I have done once." For when a thing has once been done
as well as it wants to be, it is of no further interest to
the self-improver. Yet in after years, and when it became
needful to support his family, he returned patiently to this
mechanical art - a step more than worthy of himself.
The pencils seem to have been Apollo's first experiment in
the service of Admetus; but others followed. "I have
thoroughly tried school-keeping," he writes, "and found that
my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion,
to my income; for I was obliged to dress and train, not to
say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into
the bargain. As I did not teach for the benefit of my
fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure.
I have tried trade, but I found that it would take ten years
to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be
on my way to the devil." Nothing, indeed, can surpass his
scorn for all so-called business. Upon that subject gall
squirts from him at a touch. "The whole enterprise of this
nation is not illustrated by a thought," he writes; "it is
not warmed by a sentiment; there is nothing in it for which a
man should lay down his life, nor even his gloves.
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