What was there lacking to this man? He had lineage that in his own neighbourhood gave him standing better than that of many an upstart baronet or knight, and with it health and wealth. He had a wife who was acknowledged universally to be one of the most beautiful, charming, and witty women in the county, whose devotion to himself was so marked and open that it became a public jest; who had, moreover, presented him with healthy and promising offspring. In addition to all these good things he had suddenly become in his own line one of the most famous persons in the world, so that, wherever civilized man was to be found, there his name was known as “Monk, who invented that marvellous machine, the aerophone.” Lastly, there was no more need for him, as for most of us, to stagger down his road beneath a never lessening burden of daily labour. His work was done; a great conception completed after half a score of years of toil and experiment had crowned it with unquestionable success. Now he could sit at ease and watch the struggles of others less fortunate. There are, however, few men on the right side of sixty whose souls grow healthier in idleness. Although nature often recoils from it, man was made to work, and he who will not work calls down upon himself some curse, visible or invisible, as he who works, although the toil seem wasted, wakes up one day to find the arid wilderness where he wanders strown with a manna of blessing. This should be the prayer of all of understanding, that whatever else it may please Heaven to take away, there may be left to them the power and the will to work, through disappointment, through rebuffs, through utter failure even, still to work. Many things for which they are or are not wholly responsible are counted to men as sins. Surely, however, few will press more heavily upon the beam of the balance, when at length we are commanded to unfold the talents which we have been given and earned, than those fateful words: “Lord, mine lies buried in its napkin,” or worse still: “Lord, I have spent mine on the idle pleasures which my body loved.”