I went in a stripling and grew into manhood with muscled arms big as a bookkeeper's legs.

The gases, they say, will destroy a man's lungs, but I worked all day in the mills and had wind enough left to toot a clarinet in the band.

I lusted for labor, I worked and I liked it.
And so did my forefathers for generations before me.

It is no job for weaklings, but neither was tree-felling, Indian fighting, road-making and the subduing of a wild continent to the hand of man as was done by the whole tribe of Americans for the sheer joy of conquering the wild.
There is something in man that drives him forward to do the world's work and build bigger for the coming generations, just as there is something in nature that causes new growth to come out of old dirt and new worlds to be continually spawned from the ashes of old played-out suns and stars.

When nature ceases to mold new worlds from the past decay, the universe will wither; and when man loses the urge to build and goes to tearing down, the end of his story is at hand.
A tired Thomas whose wife supported him by running a rooming house once asked me: "How many do you 'spose there are in the United States that don't have to work ?" "None," I replied, "except invalids and cripples.