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There's no knowing where the artistic temperament may break out. "I don't think that a person ought to come to the binder and just say to him, 'Bind that book for so much money.' I think the binder ought to say, 'Is the book worth binding?' and that if it were not he ought to refuse." The applications of this remarkable principle, enunciated by a bookbinder, are obvious. Applied universally it would reform the race. The tailor, when a man came to be measured, would say, "Yes, but are you worth measuring?" and if he was out of drawing would refuse to dress him, thus extruding deformity from the world and restoring the Olympian gods. The charwoman, inspired by George Herbert, would not only "sweep a room as by God's laws," but would inquire whether it was worth sweeping; the wine merchant would refuse wine to rich customers who did not deserve to drink it; and the doctors would certainly not devote their best energies to keeping gouty old noblemen alive.
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