The Ministry of Toil. 
485 
been lived the intense life of youthful years. The sitting-room, 
that cosiest room in every house—unless we except the farm-house, 
where the airy, sunny kitchen claims precedence—owes its charm to 
the fact that the aims and interests of the whole family center 
there. Work is not excluded, as from the more pretentious parlor, 
but rather gives meaning and fitness to the place. Happy the 
family in which the home-life is so sweet and strong that it cannot 
be confined within the limits of one room, but overflows and fills 
the whole house. 
Mrs. Whitney portrays with truth the natural impulse of one 
untutored in the ways of artificial life, when she makes a young 
girl to say in her admiration for a bake-shop: u Somebody came 
here to do something; the rest was, and happened, and grew. I 
hate things fixed up to be exquisite.” 
The friendships formed in the way of work, are those most 
fraught with pleasure and profit. Much of our social intercourse 
is stilted and formal, because it has no given basis. But with 
kindred aims and efforts directed to a common end, intercourse be¬ 
comes easy, natural, and delightful. I have no doubt whatever 
that the husking- and quilting-bees of our grandmother’s days, so 
happily combining work with play, were the delightful occasions 
they represent them to have been. 
It is through our work that we are able to exert our greatest in¬ 
fluence over others, and so to secure the inestimable blessing of living 
in other lives. As God treasures up his work in us, by making all 
nature minister to our needs, so we must treasure up our work in 
others, if we would have it abide. In our complex civilization, with 
its minute division of labor, we touch others at many points. This 
constant contact gives unlimited opportunity for helpful deeds, and 
increases our obligation a hundred fold; but if the responsibility is 
large, the compensation is ample, for by our entrance into other 
lives in helpful ministry we broaden immeasurably the horizen of 
our own. 
We speak most effectively through our work, and speak to a 
larger audience than the most popular orator can hope to assemble 
within reach of the voice. The humblest toiler, the simple fruits 
of whose painstaking skill pass into other and distant hands, may 
be cheered with the thought that he is contributing to the world’s 
