IN PRAISE OF IDLENESS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2894, 25 August 1909, Page 73

IN PRAISE OF IDLENESS.

A PETITION 1 . Here among your poppy fields, Idleness, I pray you, Let me waacter lazy-eyed, Slow of thought and pace, Empty-handed, light >f heart, Eager to obey you, To dream and make a madrigal Tuned to fit your face. -

Sick am I of strife and toif, I would seek your daisies, Count the clouds, and doze and dream Through drowsy afternoons. Piyitbee take me by Jfee hand — Show me where the way is — Let me change the chink of gold For your linnets' tunes.

Idleness, oh, Idleness, Smile a welcome for me; -.. Here's ft minstrel out of voice,' f weary heart to zest. oothe me with the pipe* <j£ Pxe, Hum his music o'er m-e, _•. Stock me like a tired child, Sleepy on your .breast.

— Theodosia Garrison.

Often I wish we darel.be, a trifle more honest -about idleness. Why, even Robert Stevenson felt that.it did not suffice 1# head has sun-splashed meditation, " An Apology for Idleness." Penetrated with the inexorable doctrines of early teaching, be still feels he must placate conventional and accepted ideas, and whimsically comylaiDB 1 " Jpu could aftt be put in prison.

for speaking against industry, but can be sent to Coyentry for speaking like a fool."

Some cast-iron conscience, "immaculate in its conjugation of exgry mood, past, present, and future, of the verb 'to work," will promptly send me to Gtrrentry to-day, perhaps. Well, it does not matter. Coventry is noted — or war when I was a small child — for its ribbons, and I am merely a woman %vith endless uses for ribbonsl So let us discourse irresponsibly of idleness.

To be completely, perfectly, peacefully idle is an art. In a ftew and strenuous country like our own, the Tarest art-. There are moments when the unemployed seem\ in danger of perfecting themselves in an art so far beyond the wildest dreams of our own respectable, industrious middle-class existence that we feel "something must be done"' to convert every manjack of the' unemployed' into employed, or the country will certainly go to the dogs. We, impatient a<nd ill-used at the sight, of a blessing beyond our reach — a perfect idleness.; expeesang itself. .behind a than cloud: of -acrid=-- tobacco, smoke at -astumy street comer — lose ao time m "informing our." members, ■" TBie unemployed difficulty •is becoming * acute-^something must be done." . Members buttpn-h<!>le Ministers^— something -ie done: a Uttle surplus from some mysterious department comes to -the rescue — there is always a hit of railway to' be added on to" by a mile of so that is one of the great uses of unfinished railways,; it is part of the duty of a paternal government to conjure up an armoury of picks, shovels, . ana wheelbarrows at a moment's notice. We have fought "Giant SlofehV in our- modern manner ; banished the outward and visible signs of idleness which shocked our own irritable industry; we are satisfied. t But this is a sordid aspect of idleness, something* that we, secure in our allotted tasks, are merely spectators of. -We are neither sick enough nor poor enough to be idle ; we are neither frank enough nor fearless enough to say how much we wishad we were. Instead, we never cease to plume ourselves on being "busy." Being busy, " frightfully busy," is really our panacea for every reproof- of an uneasy conscience, every unspoken rebuke from the sad eyes of a neglected friend, every, silent remonstrance embodied in* the sight of an unanswered letter. . We boast all the time ia? a gently complaining fashion about our busy lives : the " busy ness," which, to judge from our conversation, has always prevented our doing the very thing we wanted \o do. • No stranger prhblem exists than thai embodied in our busyness and our idleness. Should we not be happier, more lovable, if we would sometimes be confessedly idle?

Of course we talk an amazing amount of bosh about most things. We " moke believe " until we really .do believe all manner of fallacies, among them the stupendous one that we are all too busy to do what we want — oftener still, what we ought. Why, our cheapest excuse, " I really quite forgot," usually has appended to it tbe threadbare tag, "I was so awfully busy." Considering all things, it might be worth while to try the effect of a little idleness.

To condemn idleness as a species "of. original sin is the unfailing shibboleth of the respectable. It is a first principle of our morality; handed down from those dear parents who had it instilled ; nto them (in the days of "spare the rod, and spoil Watts and his immortal, " How doth tlie the child ") ' through the medium of Dr little busy bee," a light and pdctuaieeque effort in comparison withTtbe sombre warning of " 'Tis the voice of the sluggard." Convinced that principles remained intact, though modes of expression had been modified, our parents reared us on the kindlier moral pabulum of "The Idle Boy," that dear but misguided little person who, having "wagged" it himself from school, and finding forbidden leisure hantr heavily on his hands, invited in turn each domestic animal of his acquaintance t< " Come and play with me." Of course, each animal in tu<rn, burdened with the onus of the -*R9«ti, -eww*eoivsly---htt| firmly refused, and not only refused to play, but": took advantage of' the moment to push home the moral. Tlie high-mdnded, slightly 6tilted virtue of the horse, the .cow, ths dog (and that odious little bee most of all), who each refused to " Come and. play with me," irritated me on many a drowsy morning when my idle little body sat demurely enough at my desk in Miss Anastasia Smith's private school, and my •busy little mind was over 'tbe hills and, oh! so far away. Of course it was .good — r was in fact the only hope of making decent men and women of vs — to instilinto our earliest thoughts of lite the necessity and the j beauty of work. Work is man' 6 ealva- ! tion ; but it must be tempered with idle- j ness, as sunshine is with shade, to make ! that salvation perfect, body and soul too. I

It is good to be idle sometimes, sincerely, honestly idle.

Th» strenuous worker, man or woman, who has lost the capacity for idleness has lost a, jewel of great price : and is food for no man's envy.

" Change of work's as good as play " too often forms the energetic man or woman's formula for — rest. The very word idleness T>eeks in the nostrils of many excellent people.

Yet what a tonic to the toiler with brain or with hands ! What riches of recuperation Jie in its rarely tried negation. We workers do not enjoy idleness because we never assume it with gracious willingness. We never eater that great n«utral-tinted haven unless driven.' there by painful stress of illners, by strife of accident, or helplessness of disability. Therein lies our folly, and qur undoing. It is only a little while since "Constant Reader" explained that from his point of view the only way to truly enjoy a holiday was to take it before you had to. Well, holiday and idleness need by no means be synonymous, but they are alike in this, Uiat enforced idleness for the energetic worker loses half its chasm-. To fixtract the full flavour, the

essential delicacy from, idleness, is an art * we are -few of us conversant with — we do not realise that it must be voluntary. By idleness I mean absolute idleness— the capacity for doing nothing. Let us listen for a moment to Stevenson's apology for idlers. I lov« it the more because I realise with same Tegret that, always hurrying, pressing in o» a full and busy life, I have lost the capacity for the truly perfect idleness. "Extreme busyness, whether -at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality ; and a faculty for idleness implies a "catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There ie a «ort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about who are scarcely conscious of living except in some conventional occupation. . . It is no use speaking to such folk: they cannot be idle, their nature is not generous enough . " . Many make a large fortune who remain under-bred and pathetically stupid to the last. And meantime there goes the idler, who began life along with Ehero-^bv yonr leave, a' different picture: .' . As a matter of fact, an intelligent person, looking out" of his* eyes and hearkening in bis ears, with, a smile- on his face all tJhe" "time," wHI get more^torue; eduea/tiea than .many . another, in a life of heroic vigils." . - - He has nfueh - more to say, that lighthearted,- courageous, whimsical prince ofwriters, qp. the topic of idleness • he makes ' me feel that I, too, the a-postfe of work and effort, have overlooked something of. my duty to myself m never being idle. I have rooted out idleness so often and sodeteianinately that there is no root left now, and missing its pale soft beauty — too late— l xaxset set myself to sow the seeds for a late autumn crop. f Who, will join me? ' - ! . Who will cease to he too busy to do the tlrngs we want to do, cease to bebusy with the world's wares, the sixpences and shillings, - the calls and the card-leaving, the books that everyone is reading, and the topics that everyone is talking, and for a little space each day, I each month, each year — • j

Let' the great good sky beguile All thy dusty soul that grieves: Lay aside the book *n<? leaxn Prom a cowslip's Jeaves.