New Port Richey

And then there'll be a prayer night Friday.

You're playing like, you know, so it's like the church and, Even back at New Port Richey, the church and the people I grew up with, they're huge supporters.

We just did a recording with Amazon Music.

We just did an acoustic recording and just invited all my friends and family I grew up with that have been there since.

End of section three.

Recording by Greg Giordano, New Port Richey, Florida.

Section four of The Underground Railroad, part two.

This is a LibriVox recording.

[laughs] That's good.

[laughs] All right, and here's our last one from Phil in New Port Richey in Florida.

What did the tomato say to the other tomato during the race? Ketchup.

[laughs] He told him to ketchup.

End of CHAPTER XVII AND XVIII Recording by Greg Giordano.

New Port Richey, Florida.

CHAPTER XIX EASE OF MOOD ease it has been said is the result of forgotten toil and ease is essential to the man who works continuously and on a large scale it is fortunate rather than the reverse when one's work is not easily done at the start for early facility is often fatal to real proficiency the man who does his work without effort at the beginning is tempted to evade the training and discipline which bring ease to the mind and the hand because both have learned the secret of the particular work and mastered the art of doing it with force and freedom facility is mere agility ease comes from the perfect adjustment of the man to his tools his materials and his task the facile man as a rule does his work with as little effort at twenty as at fifty the man of trained skill does his work with increasing comfort and power the first starts more readily the second has the greater faculty of growth and is more likely to become an artist in the end it is significant that the most original and capacious minds like the most powerful bodies often betray noticeable awkwardness at the start they need prolonged exercise in order to secure freedom of movement they must have time for growth minds of a certain superficial brilliancy on the other hand often mature early because they have so little depth and range to be awkward in taking hold of one's work is not therefore a thing to be regretted as a rule it is a piece of good fortune but awkwardness must finally give place to ease if one is to do many things or great things and do them well balzac wrote many stories before he secured harmony and force of style but if as the result of his long apprenticeship he had failed to secure these qualities the creation of the comedy humane would have been beyond his power the work was so vast that no man could have accomplished it who had not learned to work rapidly and easily for ease when it is the result of toil evidences the harmonious action of the whole nature it indicates that mastery which comes to those only who see all the possibilities of the material in hand and readily put all their power into the shaping of it a great work of art conveys an impression not of effort but of force and resource one is convinced that shakespeare could have written plays and rembrandt painted portraits through an indefinite period of time without strain or exhaustion strain and exhaustion are fatal to fine quality of work exhaustion because it deprives work of vitality and strain because it robs work of repose harmony and charm it is interesting to note how deeply an audience enjoys ease in a speaker when he seems to be entirely at home and to have complete command of his resources his hearers throw off all apprehension all fear that their sympathies may be drawn upon and give themselves up to the charm of beautiful or compelling speech let a speaker show embarrassment or anxiety on the other hand and his hearers instantly share his anxiety there are speakers moreover who give no occasion for any concern about their ability to deal with a subject or an occasion but whose exertion is so evident that the audience which is always sensitive to the psychologic condition of a speaker is wearied and sometimes exhausted it is one of the characteristics of art that it conceals all trace of toil and a man's work never takes on the highest qualities until all evidences of labour and exertion are effaced from it not many months ago the members of a court of very high standing expressed great pleasure in the prospect of hearing a certain lawyer of eminence on the following morning these judges were elderly men who had listened patiently through long years to arguments of all kinds presented with all degrees of skill they had doubtless traversed the whole field of jurisprudence many times and could hardly anticipate any surprises of thought or novelties of argument and yet these patient and long-suffering jurists were looking forward with delight to the opportunity of hearing another argument on an abstruse question of legal construction the explanation of their interest was not far to seek the jurist whose appearance before them was anticipated with so much pleasure is notable in his profession for ease of manner which is in itself a very great charm this ease invests his discussions of abstract or obscure questions with a grace and finish which are within the command of the artist only and the artist is always fresh delightful and captivating mr gladstone's friends recall as one of his captivating qualities the ease with which he seemed to do his work he was never in haste he always conveyed the impression of having ample time for his varied and important tasks if he had felt the spur of haste he would have lost his power of winning through that delightful old-fashioned courtesy which none could resist if in his talks his books or his speeches there had been evidence of strain he would not have kept to the end an influence which was due in no small measure to the impression of reserve power which he always conveyed ease of mood is essential to long-sustained working power the anxious man loses force and the laborious man time which cannot be spared from the greater tasks wellington used to say that a successful commander must do nothing which he could get other men to do he must delegate all lesser tasks and relieve himself of all care of details in order that he might concentrate his full force on the matter in hand it is said that the most daring and compelling men are invariably cool and quiet in manner such men lose nothing by friction or waste of energy they work with the ease which is born of toil chapter nineteen essays on work and culture by hamilton wright maybe chapter twenty sharing the race fortune the development of one's personality cannot be accomplished in isolation or solitude the process involves close and enduring association with one's fellows if work were purely a matter of mechanical skill each worker might have his cell and perform his task as in a prison but work involves the entire personality and the personality finds its complete unfolding not in detachment but in association talent says goethe thrives in solitude but character grows in the stream of the world it is a twofold discovery which a man must make before the highest kind of success lies within his grasp the discovery of his own individual gift force or aptitude and the discovery of his place in society if it were possible to secure complete development of one's power in isolation the product would be not the full energy of a man expressing itself through a congenial activity but a detached skill exercised automatically and apart from a personality in order to stand erect on his feet in true and fruitful relations with the world about him a man must join hands with his fellows for a very large part of his education must come from his contact with the race since men began to live and to learn the lessons of life each generation has added something to that vital knowledge of the art of living which is the very soul of culture and something to the constructive and positive product of this vital knowledge wrought out into institutions organisations science art and religion this inheritance of culture and achievement is the richest possession into which the individual member of the race is born and he cannot take possession of his share of the race fortune unless he becomes one of the race family this race fortune is the product of the colossal work of the race through its entire history it represents the slow and painful toil and saving of countless multitudes of men and women it is a wealth beside which all purely monetary forms of riches are fleeting and secondary it is the enduring spiritual endowment of the race secured by the incalculable toil of all past generations now no man can secure his share in this race fortune until he joins the ranks of the workers and takes his place in the field the shop the factory the study or the atellay the idle man is always a detached man and is therefore excluded from the privileges of heirship to get the beauty of any kind of art one must train himself to see to understand and to enjoy for art is a sealed book to the ignorant to secure the largeness of view which comes from a knowledge of many cities and races one must travel with a mind already prepared by prolonged study the approach to every science is guarded by doors which open only to the hand which has been made strong by patient and persistent exercise every department of knowledge is barred and locked against the ignorant nothing which represents achievement thought knowledge skill beauty is within reach of the idol society has secured nothing which endures save as the result of persistent and self-denying work and nothing which it has created can be understood nothing which it has accumulated can be appropriated without kindred self-denial and toil it is evident therefore that the material for the education of the individual cannot be secured save by intimate fellowship with the race this fellowship must rest also in present relations for while man may get much that is of vast importance by contact with the working race of the past he cannot get either the richest material or put himself under the deepest educational process without making himself one with the working race of to-day the race fortune unlike other fortunes does not increase by its own productive powers it grows only as it is employed by those who inherit it investments of capital often lose their vitality they still represent a definite sum of money but they make no returns of interest in like manner the accumulations of the race become dead unless they are constantly vitalized by effective use the richest material for culture is valueless unless it is so employed as continually to renew the temper of culture in those who possess it the richest results of past toil genius and life are without significance in the hands of the ignorant and it has happened more than once that the pearls of past civilisation have been trampled into the mire by the feet of swine the architectural remains of the older rome were ruthlessly destroyed in the years before the renaissance and put to menial use as mere building material they had reverted to the condition and value of crude stone because no one perceived their higher values there is unfortunately another kind of ignorance not quite so dense as that which does not recognize beauty of form or value of historical association but not less destructive there is that ignorance of the spiritual force behind the form which makes a fetish of the form and so misses the interior wealth which it contains there has spread among men and women of the dilettante temper the belief that to know the results and products of the past simply as curios and relics is to share the culture which these things of beauty and skill embody and preserve and this false idea has helped to spread abroad the feeling that culture is accomplishment rather than force and that it is for the idle rather than for the active and creative there never was a more radical misconception of a fundamental process for culture in the true sense involves as a process the highest and truest development of a race and as a product the most enduring spiritual expression of race genius and experience the culture of the greeks was the highest form of their vital force and the product of that culture was not only their imperishable art but their political social and religious organization and ideals their deepest life went into their culture and the most enduring fruits of that culture are also the most significant expressions of their life to get at the sources of power in shakespeare's plays one must not only understand the secrets of their structure as works of art but one must also discern their value as human documents one must pass through them into the passion the suffering the toil of the race no one can get to the heart of those plays without getting very near to the heart of his race and no one can secure the fruits of culture from their study until he has come to see with shakespeare that the unrecorded life experience of the race is more beautiful more tragic and more absorbing than all the transcriptions of that experience made by men of genius in other words the ultimate result of a true study of shakespeare is such an opening of the mind and such a quickening of the imagination that the student sees on all sides in the lives of those about him the stuff of which the drama is made not to the idle but to the workers does shakespeare reveal himself chapter twenty CHAPTER

XXI AND XXII On Work and Culture This is a LibriVox recording.