What is My Work To-day.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIX, Issue II, 12 July 1902, Page 121

What is My Work To-day.

Here is something that someone has written about work that is so full of truth and real common sense that I want all my young friends to read it: “Let us not try to escape our work nor to shirk it. Above all, let us not fail to see it. As long- as we live we have a work to do. We shall never be too old or too feeble. Illness, weakness, fatigue, sorrow—none of these things can excuse us from this work of ours. That we are alive to-day is proof positive that there is something for us to do. Let us ask ourselves as we arise each morning, What is my work to-day? Each tresh morning puts a new chance of life into our hands as a gift, to see what we will do with it.” Such words as these ought to give all the workers of the world fresh inspiration, and all the idlers ought to be moved to industry. Life is never a weariness to those who are well employ-ed. It is the idle who are restless and unhappy, and who talk about life being a failure. Did you ever hear a man who was always busy say that life was a failure? Who are the unhappy, the morose, the grumbling people of the world? Are they the people who are accomplishing something in this life?

Do you think that they ask themselves each morning, “What is my work to-day?” The most fretful, fault-finding person I know, ana the one whom it is the least pleasure to meet, is a young man of about twenty-three years of age, who is unfortunate enough to have quite a large income without working for it. 1 once heard him say that he “could afford to be idle” because he had “plenty of money, anyhow.” Do you think there is any person in the world who can “afford to be idle?” I was calling at the home of one of my friends the other evening, when the oldest son of the family came home from the place where he is employed. After he had greeted me his mother said: “Well, Harvey, did you have a hard day at the office?” “Yes,” he replied, “the hardest day I have had for three months.” “Why, were you so unusually busy?” “No, mother; we were all so unusually idle. We had almost nothing to do all day. Such days are so much more wearisome than our really busy days. 1 know of nothing in this world so hard as to kill time.” And yet there are many young fellows on the look-out for places in which they will have as little as possible to do. They are unmanly and unworthy enough to want to "kill time.’ They know nothing of the fine spirit in these words of Carlyle’s: “The modern majesty consists in work. What a man can do is his greatest ornament, and he always consults his dignity by doing it.” Do you know of any downright lazy man in all your list of acquaintances who is respected? Is it not true that such men are held in contempt by the people of the vicinity in which they live? And it is true that they will some day have to account for all the wasted years of their misspent lives. Every life spent in idleness is a misspent life.