FROM MY WINDOW.

Shannon News, 7 February 1922, Page 3

FROM MY WINDOW.

XIV.—THE BLESSING OF WORK. (By “RTERA.”) ‘•Do you wonder where fairies may be found? They are amongst those amiable mortals who knead .tread with energy, mend rents with cheerfulness, nurse the sick with => miss, and put genius into a stew.' ***** Are men looking at life and its responsibilities more bravely to-day? There is certainly an air of briskness being wafted through my window that has been lacking on previous sale days lately; and this savours of an uplift somewhere. Men in groups of twos and threes are chatting together earnestly, one in each group measuring space with his hands to emphasise his point, while the others listen, full_ of interest. They move away, and other small groups take their place like a human kaleidoscope. Let me watch while I may, for presently they will all with one accord have disappeared front the street and be on the way home to their work that must go on, sale day or no sale day. Blessed are the ones who find in their work their hobby. In choosing one’s life-work, a man should single out one in which he has an ideal to work for. If he chooses to be a tinker, then let him strive to be a good tinker. As a great man lias said, efforts are always successes. It is a greater thing to try without succeeding, than to succeed without trying. Our work is to keep busy. It is a beautiful world, and while we are here we should do our best to make it more beautiful, and leave it more beautiful than we found it. Of course, we are often called upon to do uncongenial work, for we have not yet reached the millenium, but at least in the doing of it we can bear our cross, and not drag it; by remembering that there’s another day to-morrow, and also: —

‘Come what come,may, Time and the hour Runs through the roughest day.”

1 came across some good advice lately: “There is no greater obstacle to success than waiting for something to turn up; go to work and turn up something, if it be only a potato.” There is plenty to do if we only look for it: sometimes we find too.much and this disheartens us. Then worry creeps in, and we feel as did Cecil Rhodes, who thought in continents: “So little done, so much to do.”

It is worry, not work, that kills. Worry in work is as smoke coming from an engine—a great demonstration, with nothing to substantiate it. It spoils the clearness of the atmosphere, hives tlie eyesight a wrong perspective, and causes destruction, not only to one’s own well-being, but to that of those all around. “Don’t worry, hustle,” says the American. But this advice is much easier to give to the other fellow than to keep for one’s self. A man once said, “I have lived over eighty years, and have had countless worries over things, most oi which have never happened.”

It is a mistake to think that Adam and Eve’s punishment took Ihe form of their having to work. Work is not punishment when we are allowed to enjoy the product; yet how many people by their action to-day,try to proclaim work as such. Someone has described freedom as “the right to wear the fetters that fit.” Freedom is the right lo choose our most congenial work. Punishment lies more in seeing congenial work waiting to he done and knowing that we cannot find time to do it. mm ' * * * * *

Recreation is a change of work.. The manual labourer finds rest in 1 lie reading of books, while the student finds joy in pottering around in his oldest clothes, digging and delving. Why does one professional man spend the whole of his holiday in carting bricks to form a pathway in his gar-den-work that could he accomplished in half the time by a jobbing gardener. Or why does another delight in spending his holiday creepiug about under a dusty roof, installing his eleelric wires; while another brain worker digs in his garden until his back aches, and if you suggest that he is working too hard. “This is recreation, tin’s is play,” will he his answer? It is because Nature abhors onesided development, and teaches us that an evenly-balanced Jack makes the best kind of citizen. Everyone is not like the tennis enthusiast who was taking part in a lengthy inter-provin-cial tournament. An off-day occurred for rest, when no matches were played, and one member said, “How shall we spent to-day?” “Let’s have some games of tennis,” she answered.

Do the hardest work first, and do it every day. Nothing seems hard to a fresh man. But leave it till later on, and its difficulties assume Gargantuan proportions. If becomes a nightmare as big as the small boy’s Christmas plum pudding one, and as easy to di-

gest. Thinking over it does no good—it just requires tackling. A fresh man is better able to concentrate his mind on his work, and in the morning there are usually fewer distractions.

Wiiat dislocation of traffic takes place when a few men decide that they are not going to work! Everything is going on smoothly—lorries pass laden with the hundreds of things we think necessary for our sustenance and comfort—compressed hay and “Glaxo,” bales of wool and biscuits, tins of jam and matches, empty iron tanks and full benzine tins, etc., and we take no notice. Then comes a bolt from the blue. One man at a seaport town decides that he won’t work. Another folds his arms. A third catches the complaint, and it becomes epidemic. What happens to our busy procession of lorries in this country district It stops. “Never mind,” we think at the moment; “we have heaps to go on with.” Then we find ourselves out of mustard. “What? Not to be obtained?” “Oh, yes; so many tons are waiting to be moved when the steamers and trains and trams and carts and horses and men move.” But we don’t want a ton, only one little spoonful. And we find ourselves going without more than mustard by the time the “won’t work epidemic” has subsided. In the mean time babies have not had enough milk to drink; invalids and elderly people have shivered by tireless grates witli purses have grown as flat as pancakes, and one is reminded, of the nursery rhyme of childhood:— “Eire won’t burn stick, stick won't- beat dog, Dog won’t bite pig, Pig won’t get over the stile, And I won’t- get home to-night!" Aud all because one man decided not t.o work! “Let me but do my work from day to day, In held or forest, at the desk or loom, In roaring market-place or tranquil room; Let me but find it in my heart to say, When vagrant wishes beckon me astray: This is my work; my blessing, nbt my doom; Of all wlm Jive, 1 am the one by whom This work can best be done, in Ihe right wayl”