Show IDLENESS ESS PLAYS MANY PARTS there are th the c conati ally y ado indo lent ent those who like ur dr jhnon john on are never physically ready to get ge it ip in the morning but who like him are pot po 0 of a conscience which compels them now and again to face the tion oi of what they have compared with what they might have done and to stand aghast at the comparison there are those whom circumstances have made idle riches absence ot of motive for exertion ill III health real or fancied indulgent friends and much more often by self indulgence that idleness Is i on one e of the seven deadly sins gives them no sort of concern it Is of the essence ot of their complaint to have bave no feeling of their own infirmity they are asleep they cannot tell their dreams for they do not even now abow that they are dreaming giving up nerveless relaxation has become a habit and to them as to the immortal mr toot though from a different motive nothing is of any consequence but whereas it was his own convenience his hi own feelings his hl own comfort that never were of consequence to the unselfish toots it Is precisely your convenience your feelings feeling that are to the idle man of no consequence floating idly about on the great pacific ocean of indolence he makes first one compromise mise and then another with self res hect until he ends by sacrificing the esteem of his fellow men on the private altar of his own sloth ills affairs get first muddled then embarrassed then decaying then desperate and he feebly flatters batters himself with an idea of prosperity now that all is gone it is of no consequence to him that he has impoverished his hi relations and brought his wife who brought him money as well as good will who has borne him children and borne with him for or a quarter of a centry it is ot of no consequence to him that he has brought her and them to poverty ills round unalterably good humored face ace his stolidly physical bearing his placid equanimity proclaim him a true lotos tater eater to him it is always afternoon why should he toll toil let what is broken remain so let him alone he is one of the ill III used race of men who ask only remissions from labor unfortunately tor for this lotus eater lotos are not indigenous in the british isles he cannot or will not dig to beg he is not ashamed only itis it Is too much trouble hs table is furnished he scarcely knows and not at all cares how or by whom sort son or daughter wife or brother friend or stranger it is all one to to him ills his friends have long given up all thought of his work working ng have givin given in to 16 the power of the vis via inertia of which he is so prodigious an example like the birds of the air though lie he neither sows bows nor reaps tar far less stores up for the future yet yet he is fed and clothed and Is seldom moreover without a coin in his pocket As in the ant world there Is a race ot of idlers so inveterately helpless that should their voluntary nurses desert them they would die of their own incapacity to provide food for themselves so among other men there Is scarcely a community without its idle members to whom the industrious minister for whom they toil and deny themselves in order to prolong for their parasites their long day of rest and dreamful ease that idleness should have been long considered the athe badge of gentry we all remember the servant who warranted her mistress quite a lady because she never put her hand to nothing II and that this notion still survives ancon ly in many minds li Is perhaps one reason why the idle are so long endured that they hire have in all probability sunk in the social scale and stilt still preserve some traces of the gentility to which they we ve reborn Is another they are living paradoxes they eat bread unsweetened by toll and do not find it disagrees with mith them they sleep the sleep of the just add never dream of unfilled duties they somehow manage to escape the universal doom while those about them earn their bread by the sweat of their brow these are concerned only in the consumption of it and never turn a hair in its production lean in mind if plump of person incorrigibly idle and imper curably good tempered they peacefully bring their preposterous careers to a conclusion clu cl and the story of it reads like a satire upon careful industry chambers journal |