THE MASTER VICE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XL, Issue 5, 7 January 1907, Page 4

THE MASTER VICE.

PROCRASTINATION DESCRIBED BY A CONFESSED VICTIM i

"The? bane of my existence," said the procrastinating man, " has been my habit of putting things off. I never do to-day what I can put off till to-morrow. ' ...

" The result is that I am always putting things off and .never doing any more than is necessary for my current daily hand to mouth support; and so, as the saying is, I never have any-* thing. I am not independent, but always depend upon; somebody else for, the work that will enable.me to live, and so I can never say that my soul id my own. I must do thework lam set to do by some stronger man; whether I like it or not, and so; I; plod along, just getting through, while the man who collars things gets on. • j "Of late years as I have come to realise its evil effects and the enormous difficulty of overcoming it I have come to think that the master vice of all is procrastination. ■ And coming to think thus has disturbed me a little, because I have to give up an originally preconceived and long - cherished notion. • .. . ..

".I had long held: that the most nearly ineradicable ■of vices was gambling, but now.. I thought the most difficult of all vices to cure oneself of was that of } procrastination. Was I wrong then? And could it be that I was wrong now?; "This, as L say;:a disturbed me a little; but now' ■ oir this point I rest quite easy. For I- have. discovered, contradictory asrthis, at first thought, might seem,,l; have discovered that I was right tJieh aiid that I am right now

" For now I discover that the vice of gambling is but another phase of, or at least-the :outcrop of, that of procrastination .^lr<l^vg?eat majority of those given over to gambling hope to get /something "for nothing, they hope to get.money without effort. They put off from day to day the hard, unflinching, work, that would give them a' sure thing, without chances", on the racg'-'ol life, and make just enough to indulge their vice and their vain hopes. ' ; ; "So gambling is really but a form, or- outcome, of the vice of procrastination. And by the same line of reasoning I suppose we might say the same of drunkenness, which is essentially a procrastinating vice; we put things off to-day, to-day we will drink; we willwork to-morrow.

"And I:do not know but what we should: find that every ill proceeds from the vice of procrastination; and so this, which might seem but a form of laziness, is really the master vice; and I am one of its most closely bound victims. I don't drink ,and I don't gamble; but I have got the fatal habit of: putting things off. " Inertia, dullness,, lack of power from want of exercise, come from it— the procrastinating man is always at the same dead-low level. He is always going to do something, never doing it; just pulling through with the work he has to do, and gaining correspondingly small rewards. He never knows the joy of doing things nor gathers in its pronts ; but habit bound, he settles down in lifelong slavery. " And I am one of those victims! Occasionally Ido rouse up and do something out of my set routine, and in the accomplishing of some rugged task that I thus take up I find a great new joy and pride; I am going-to"keep this up ; but next day I siiik'to the old level again, and stay there-" "it is so much easier to put things off than to do things, and this, the trunk habit of which all others, are but branches, is so deep rooted. "But lam not without hope. I have lopped off those branches of which I spoke, and I am prying, prying around the roots of the trunk.—New York Journal.