“It would tire your brain, and give you too much to do with books! You would learn chiefly from thoughts, and I stand up for things first. And where would be your leisure?” “You have something in your mind, Molly! I will do whatever you would have me!” “No, Walter,” exclaimed Molly, with a flash, “I will take no such promise! You will, I know, do what I or any one else may propose, if it appears to you right! But don’t you think that, for the best work, a man ought to be independent of the work?” “You would have your poet a rich man!” “Just the contrary, Walter! A rich man is the most dependent of all--at least most rich men are. Take his riches, and what could himself do for himself? He depends on his money. No; I would have the poet earn his bread by the sweat of his brow--with his hands feed his body, and with his heart and brain the hearts of his brothers and sisters. We have talked much about this, your father and I. That a man is not a gentleman who works with his hands, is the meanest, silliest article in the social creed of our country. He who would be a better gentleman than the Carpenter of Nazareth, is not worthy of Him. He gave up His working only to do better work for His brothers and sisters, and then He let the men and women, but mostly, I suspect, the women, that loved Him, support him! Thousands upon thousands of young men think it more gentlemanly to be clerks than to be carpenters, but, if I were a man, I would rather _make_ anything, than add up figures and copy stupid letters all day long! If I had brothers, I would ten times rather see them masons, or carpenters, or book-binders, or shoe-makers, than have them doing what ought to be left for the weaker and more delicate!” “Which do you want me to be, Molly--a carpenter or a shoe-maker?” “Neither, Walter--but a farmer: you don’t want to be a finer gentleman than your father! Stay at home and help him, and grow strong. Plow and cart, and do the work of a laboring man. Nature will be your mate in her own work-shop!” Molly was right. If Burns had but kept to his plow and his fields, to the birds and the beasts, to the storms and the sunshine! He was a free man while he lived by his labor among his own people! Ambition makes of gentlemen time-servers and paltry politicians; of the plowman-poet it made an exciseman! “What will then become of the leisure you want me to have, Molly?” “Your father will see that you have it! In winter, which you say is the season for poetry, there will be plenty of time, and in summer there will be some. Not a stroke of your pen will have to go for a dinner or a pair of shoes! Thoughts born of the heaven and the earth and the fountains of water, will spring up in your soul, and have time to ripen. If you find you are not wanted for an author, you will thank God you are not an author. What songs you would write then, Walter!”