"DOING NOTHING FOR EVER AND EVER.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2343, 10 July 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

"DOING NOTHING FOR EVER AND EVER.

Sir John Lubbock the other day declared at the Mansion House that an epitaph in a Norfolk churchyard expressed the feelings of the great majority of our shopkeepers : Here lies a puor woman who always were tired. For she lived in a world where too much were required. '■ Weop not for me, friends," she said, ''for I'm swing Where there'll neither be working, nor reading, nor sewing. Then wnep not for me, friends, though death us do sever, For I'm going to' do nothing; for ever and ever." Thousands upon thousands of our countrymen and countrywomen, said Sir John Lubbock, share the feelings of the poor woman in Norfolk. A study of popular hymnology would probably -confirm this conviction.There are whole acres of hymns about heaven which express only one thought; that of " doing nothing for ever and ever," to the accompaniment of slumberous mnsio from golden harps. What a comment it is on the rush and wear and tear of English life that the busiest people in the whole world—for in this respect English and Americans are at one—should regard it as the tummum bonurn of celestial felicity a condition of glorified laziness but little removed, as far as action is concerned, from the Mirvaoaof the Buddhist,—'Pall Mall Budget.'