Those who brace themselves to its hardness find a vigour and resourcefulness within them which they had never suspected, and the pride of personal achievement in making a home brings out possibilities which in softer circumstances might have remained for ever dormant, with their treasure of happiness and hardy virtues.

It is possible, no doubt, in that severe and plain life to lose many things which are not replaced by its self-reliance and hardihood.
It is possible to drop into merely material preoccupation in the struggle for existence.

But it is also possible not to do so, and the difference lies in having an ideal.
To Catholics even work in the wilderness and life in the backwoods are not dissociated from the most spiritual ideals.

The pioneers of the Church, St.Benedict's monks, have gone before in the very same labour of civilization when Europe was to a great extent still in backwoods.
And, when they sanctified their days in prayer and hard labour, poetry did not forsake them, and learning even took refuge with them in their solitude to wait for better times.

It was religion which attracted both.
Without their daily service of prayer, the _Opus Dei_, and the assiduous copying of books, and the desire to build worthy churches for the worship of God, arts and learning would not have followed the monks into the wilderness, but their life would have dropped to the dead level of the squatter's existence.