LAZINESS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 72, 21 March 1912, Page 2

LAZINESS.

The art of idleness is one that ■lias not won true appreciation from the public, though Gabriel de Annum /.io has sung its charms, 1 and W. 1. Locke has written in its praise. It ’ is a matter of tasto, and others have regarded it as a vice, a disease, or a science. All will agree; however, th&t the reported incident of a gar- ' 'doner who committed suicide out of sheer disinclination to go to work was an exceptional case. ! He started i jobs, it was ; staged at the inquest, but he never cduld finish them. His case is exceptional, but not unique. There were two other cases in the week before the last mail left England. '.'Aw wife asked the Magistrate at Wood Green Police . Court what she was to do about her husband, whom she described as a “piece worker.” It seemed that he worked only on Wednesdays, when it was •his custom/*to put in two hours’ toil. The second case was man sentenced to three years’ penal servitude for theft. His age tfas 40, and it was stated that he had only done one day’s work in his life. This was during the taxicab strike, when he wheeled a barrow of luggage from Charing Cross to Euston. In one way it is regrettable that he had to be sent to prison, because people have to work there, and it seems a pity to spoil the record. There were, at one time, an English journal states, at least half a dozen claimants to the title of the “laziest man in Great Britain.” One of the claimants went further, and called himself the “laziest man on earth.” He went to bed when he was ten, and did not get up till he was 39. Then, for some mysterious reason, he began to got bored. He rose from his couch in the year 1907, took to the strenuous life, and was last heard of escorting a coal truck. The other laziest man on earth was a Londoner, who contributed to the hilarity of newspaper readers in 1910 This man (who may now be either dead or reformed) was a sad sufferer from daylight insomnia. He found it impossible to sleep all the 24 hours of the day. Nevertheless, like a true son of the bull-dog breed, he tried hard. With an unwearied persistency that cannot be too highly commended, he went on for years trying to sleep all day long, and even the hardest hearted were affect ed by the simple pathos of his plea when, appearing at the Police Court on a charge of failing to supnort his wife, ho said merely: “I suffer from insomnia.” A man charged with sleeping out, at the WilWden Police Court, could not make even that excuse, as he fell asleep in the clock while the Magistrate was pronouncing sentence upon him. At the same Court the Ma gist rate asked a man if he had anything to say. The fellow had not worked for so long that ho had forgotten whether he was a gardener or a printer. “Hardly worth while,” ho drawled in reply, and disappeared, yawning, into the cells holow.