'No, indeed!' said John. 'Your powers were not given for the hewing down of forests.'

'Were not they?' said Percy, stretching and clenching a hard muscular wrist and hand.

I tell you, John, I am wearying for want of work--hard, downright, substantial work!'

'Well, you have it, have you not?'

'Pshaw! Pegasus won't let himself out on hire. I can't turn my sport into my trade. When I find myself writing for the lucre of gain, the whole spirit leaves me.'

'That is what you have been doing for some time.'

'No such thing. Literature was my holiday friend at first; and if she put a gold piece or two into my pocket, it was not what I sought her for. Then she came to my help to beguile what I thought was an interval of waiting for the serious task of life. I wrote what I thought was wanted. I sent it forth as my way of trying what service I could do in my generation. But now, when I call it my profession, when I think avowedly, what am I to get by it?--Faugh! the Muse is disgusted; and when I go to church, I hang my head at "Lay not up to yourselves treasures upon earth--"'

'A fine way you found of laying them up!'