TOO LITTLE TO DO.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 62, 13 November 1880, Page 4 (Supplement)

TOO LITTLE TO DO.

I am always very sorry for those who have too little to do. They seem to me scarcely to have a fair chance in the, world. Their natures are not properly taxed' and tested, trained and developed They might have been among the great and wise and good and famous in the world, but they have fallen back into the ranks of the Ignavum pecus. Their liberation from the common cares and activities^of life, of wMchi perhaps, they prided and plumed themselves, is their drawback and their band, It is even possible that r it' may help to kill them.. A traveller who visited the'Pitcairn islanders in their lonely Pacific home found some of them dying of sheer old age when between fifty /and sixty. They had too little to Jdo- The rough fibre of life, for its due adjustment, needs' ascertain amount of work and worry. — of .working against the, collar, of strain-" ingagrainst wind and tide., . One day two strangers met at a little, inn in* the Isle of Wight. One was a medical man; the other was a man of letters, whose avocations gave him incessant work, and called him into, all sorts of places. I expect that the, same desire for repose had brought them through different paths to this same, quiet haven of ies(i. In the morning the special correspondent— ' so we haff better designate him—- lay ' languidly on the grass, plucking buttercups and daisies, and gazing languidly into the blue depths of the sky. <• Charles ( James Fox used to say that there was only one thing better than lying on the grass with a' book, and that was lying on 'the grass without a book. . The medical man watched him. Those medical men often have a brick of watching every one. - Their fellow-greaturea are their books, and they get into the habit of scanning such pages very swiftly. ••Sir," said the medical mam "I* should think that. you were rather fond of lying" on the' grass and gathering daises?'' > " ~ ■ " •• Sjr^was the answer,. •« I have a^pMsion forit. . I should: like .nothing, better in lite than, to lie on. the ground, and pluok the daifleaV'j ; ' c" And yet> sir, 1 ' waa jhe. rejoinder, •• I have i. strong idea, that yout are. a maniwhd goes about 'a great deal in the, world, and* takes an; interjst.in a great many, subjects." "Igo about .a, gre%t c dea|i too,.muoh7 and work a great deal mora than I like.: If Jthad my ohoipe. in, life, I shpuld,ue all. day long on the grass, and pipk daises.' 1 - "Do yon Know, sir, what would b» the probab^reanllof , your, having toa\ little to do?" . '•'Wdl l w,hatw.?uldjtl»a??'., * »« It would probably fee an attack. •! para-, lysis,/, To shut np^or^jffouTcl, piobabty be And Waotioa^y^ijtug'jji, a fr'nfl ot 0 thing which does not happen so infif4qen)iy- ; ai migh^be supposed,. ; It is always, a,, d,*? I***"1 ***" reflreafipin the, full tide of ,haiuieu r^%

enjoying leisure. Men of the highest profes sional eminence have found themselves absolutely stranded when they have passed fiom the condition of having too much to that oftoo litUe to do. One might here tsU t»gio narratives of melancholy despair and suioide.