WORK.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3056, 12 April 1881, Page 4

WORK.

We are persistently told that no pleasure equals that which is derived from work. In a remote way I subsoribo to the assertion. Ll_o iiio boy who enjoyed a siege of colic becfm;o he " felt so good when it stopper"!." I confess to exquisite enjoyment in occasional cessations from work. I do not believe there is much work that is in itself pleasurable ; hence it is my conviction that the greater portion of what has been said and written on that text is either rhapsody or cant. The fact that there have been great exceptions is not of general significance. Primarily (and scripturally) work is called a curse; and yet Sir Isaac Newton was at times utterly absorbed in his work —dominated by it, ancl forgetful of everthing else, not excepting his Englishman's dinner. Composers have been rendered ecstatic by their work, but the exceptional cases are those of persons who live in a kind of inpiration, which the big world of workers can neither understand nor feel. It is true that work is very _i\eii a source or.means of pleasure, the degree of which is dependent on tho individual worker's capacity for enjoyment. This capacity, in its turn, rests largely on circumstances, surroundings, habits; but work, in the abstract, is to most of" us more painful than pleasureable. The author who sees a product of his brain and hand gi\ur beautiful or useful, undoubtedly experiences pleasure, but nothing like to that which he feels in contemplating that same product finished. To most of us work is a necessity. Our stomachs must be fed; our bodies must be clothed and housed ; the everyday demands of custom must bo satisfied ; advancing civilisation multiplies our real and fancied needs. All of these things costs money ; money costs work, and work costs vitality. We, in America, are prodigal in the expenditure of vitality, and overwork is almost our common condition. This is frightful. We innsfc tack ship and sail into calmer seas or we shall be wrecked. In a word, we must devise a more equuable adjustment of work and play before we can begin to talk about work and being in any appreciable sense synonymous.

J. lie mere labourer is a hopeless slave. The true worker must have underlying his life some clearly defined object for which he toils. Without that his energies speedily become bankrupt, and then his struggles bear about ihe same relation to work in its nobler sense that the spasmodic and vain clutckings of the drowning man bear to the strokes of the bold and easy swimmer who disports himself for pastime.

I can sufficiently trust my convictions on this subject to assert that the greater number of those persons who work for a living come reluctantly to their daily tasks. I am willing to admit that it is not always the irksomem'ss of work that breeds reluctance. A want of physical force is often at the bottom of it. That want gives birth to numerous other distressing conditions which I do not need to mention here, because the main proposition is, it seems to roe, obvious. That conceded, it interests us most to inquire how we may reduce that reluctance to its lowest terms.

Before entering upon that, perhaps I had better explain that when I say most men renew their daily tasks reluctantly I do not mean that work is simply punishment; but that there is nearly always the involuntary regret that fortune had not willed it otherwise for us. The man who is fairly master of himself can beget a cheerfulness which amounts to willingness, and so he meets his work quite as a matter of course. Tho soldier long used to fierce encounters may go forth to battle in much the same way. I have even seen pugilists enter the ring with no outward signs of agitation, though I never doubted that they would have preferred just one more day of training. When the fight is hottest reluctance vanishes, and these giants meet the bloody issue with courage, endurance, determination and the skill which confront them in the arena at large—where hai'd knocks and high rewards are taken " with equal thanks," and where the most splendid intrepidity serves no nobler end than conscientious plodding. This is the democracy of work.

The spirit in which we work has a deal to do with reducing our reluctance to its minimum ; and I do not know as 1 can illustrate my meaning more clearly than by rehearsing my own experience. Very early in life I made the discovery that work was my inheritance. I stirred up something of a rebellion, but it proved wholly impotent. To have learned that was something gained, and I soon persuaded myself that if I would esoape galling I must accommodate my boibs to the shackles to which my sovereign, Destiny, had condemned me. You will concede that such a course was both rational and politic. I became a cheerful if not a willing worker, accepting life as I found it, and making the most of trival as of larger opportunities. Out of that cheerfulness came a kind of enthusiasm for the immediate work in hand. Happily there was no lack of wise encouragement, and by-and-by I began to be conscious of a new sensation, without, however being able to define it. I know now that it was ambition; not an overmastering and selfish passion ; not "amounting devil in the heart," but a clear and steady flame, by wdiose warmth I am cheered, and by whose light I walk in hopeful confidence along the smoothed growing and broadening way of life and labour. All this has come out of the simple discovery that while work is inevitable it may be compelled to serve as a means to happy ends. I cannot quite say that master and slave have exchanged conditions, but I no more writhe under the lash, and the shackles that used to cut cruelly and deep, I have oome to look upon as rather pretty ornaments. So much for work with hope ahead for the work.

I havo reason to believe that mine is no uncommon experience, and I know that in setting down these words I am merely shaping thoughts for print which everyone in middle life who reads them will hail as very old acquaintances. Work with an object is joyful. Work without an object is dismal drudgery. The newspaper reporter who daily covers his assigned territory and records the mere occurrences he meets feels none of that elation with which a bold and successful stroke of roportorial enterprise uplifts him. We cannot excel in work that is productive of no elation. Tho task that is approached with groans will show forced and unnatural. Someone has cleverly said that the proper union of the worker and his work is like a marriage which is a genuine love match. I would like to add that the bliss of such a union is many times multiplied by a comfortable marriage portion. Work well paid well continue to increaso in value. A sordid union brings no real happiness ; and work done solely for pelf is of little worth. There must be honest love in botli cases. I do not under-estimate the importance of compensation for labour, nor am I insensible to the truth that tho more highly spiced is work with willingness, the greater will be the number of dollars it produces. Jn the practical ways of this world, tbe dollars thus produced by willing work bring me around to the point whenco I set out, viz : the means of exquisite enjoyment in occasional cessations from work.—Signor Max, in Detroit Free Press.