How to Get on in the World | Page 9

effort
as idleness. "Idleness," says Burton, in that delightful old book "The
Anatomy of Melancholy," "is the bane of body and mind, the nurse of
naughtiness, the chief mother of all mischief, one of the seven deadly
sins, the devil's cushion, his pillow and chief reposal . . . An idle dog
will be mangy; and how shall an idle person escape? Idleness of the
mind is much worse than that of the body; wit, without employment, is
a disease--the rust of the soul, a plague, a hell itself. As in a standing
pool, worms and filthy creepers increase, so do evil and corrupt
thoughts in an idle person; the soul is contaminated . . . Thus much I
dare boldly say: he or she that is idle, be they of what condition they
will, never so rich, so well allied, fortunate, happy--let them have all
things in abundance, all felicity that heart can wish and desire, all
contentment--so long as he, or she, or they, are idle, they shall never be
pleased, never well in body or mind, but weary still, sickly still, vexed
still, loathing still, weeping, sighing, grieving, suspecting, offended
with the world, with every object, wishing themselves gone or dead, or
else carried away with some foolish fantasy or other.".
Barton says a great deal more to the same effect.
It has been truly said that to desire to possess without being burdened
by the trouble of acquiring is as much a sign of weakness as to
recognize that everything worth having is only to be got by paying its
price is the prime secret of practical strength. Even leisure cannot be
enjoyed unless it is won by effort. If it have not been earned by work,
the price has not been paid for it.
But apart from the supreme satisfaction of winning, the effort required
to accomplish anything is ennobling, and, if there were no other
success it would be its own reward.

"I don't believe," said Lord Stanley, in an address to the young men of
Glasgow, "that an unemployed man, however amiable and otherwise
respectable, ever was, or ever can be, really happy. As work is our life,
show me what you can do, and I will show you what you are. I have
spoken of love of one's work as the best preventive of merely low and
vicious tastes. I will go farther and say that it is the best preservative
against petty anxieties and the annoyances that arise out of indulged
self-love. Men have thought before now that they could take refuge
from trouble and vexation by sheltering themselves, as it wore, in a
world of their own. The experiment has often been tried and always
with one result. You cannot escape from anxiety or labor--it is the
destiny of humanity . . . Those who shirk from facing trouble find that
trouble comes to them.
"The early teachers of Christianity ennobled the lot of toil by their
example. 'He that will not work,' said St. Paul, 'neither shall he eat;' and
he glorified himself in that he had labored with his hands and had not
been chargeable to any man. When St. Boniface landed in Britain, he
came with a gospel in one hand, and a carpenter's rule in the other; and
from England he afterward passed over into Germany, carrying thither
the art of building. Luther also, in the midst of a multitude of other
employments, worked diligently for a living, earning his bread by
gardening, building, turning, and even clock-making."
Coleridge has truly observed, that "if the idle are described as killing
time, the methodical man may be justly said to call it into life and
moral being, while he makes it the distinct object, not only of the
consciousness, but of the conscience. He organizes the hours and gives
them a soul; and by that, the very essence of which is to fleet and to
have been, he communicates an imperishable and spiritual nature. Of
the good and faithful servant, whose energies thus directed are thus
methodized, it is less truly affirmed that he lives in time than that time
lives in him. His days and months and years, as the stops and punctual
marks in the record of duties performed, will survive the wreck of
worlds, and remain extant when time itself shall be no more."
Washington, also, was an indefatigable man of business. From his

boyhood he diligently trained himself in habits of application, of study
and of methodical work. His manuscript school-books, which are still
preserved, show that, as early as the age of thirteen, he occupied
himself voluntarily, in copying out such things as forms of receipts,
notes of hand, bills of exchange, bonds, indentures, leases, land
warrants and other dry documents, all written out