The final test is not the
perfection of precedent, not regularity, but life, spirit.
It was one of those perfect, sunny, calm mornings that sometimes come in
early April: the zest of winter yet in the air, but a promise of summer.
I built a fire of oak chips in the middle of the yard, between two flat
stones. I brought out my old axe, and when the fire had burned down
somewhat, leaving a foundation of hot coals, I thrust the eye of the axe
into the fire. The blade rested on one of the flat stones, and I kept it
covered with wet rags in order that it might not heat sufficiently to
destroy the temper of the steel. Harriet's old gray hen, a garrulous
fowl, came and stood on one leg and looked at me first with one eye and
then with the other. She asked innumerable impertinent questions and was
generally disagreeable.
"I am sorry, madam," I said finally, "but I have grown adamant to
criticism. I have done my work as well as it lies in me to do it. It is
the part of sanity to throw it aside without compunction. A work must
prove itself. Shoo!"
I said this with such conclusiveness and vigour that the critical old
hen departed hastily with ruffled feathers.
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