University of Virginia Library

IDLE PEOPLE.

—Shaks.

There is no class of human beings visited with
more matter-of-course vituperation than idle people.
Idleness! it is the greatest vice of civilization,
for it is the least profitable. Men may lie,
and cheat, and game, and drink, and break the ten
commandments in whatsoever way they please,
and they will find apologists; but for idleness, no
one lifteth up his voice to speak. From the busy
haunts of men, from the toil and turmoil of the
marts of traffic, from the din and smoke of manufactories,
from the high courts of Mammon, it is for
ever banished: only on the pleasant hill side, in
the waving meadow, and under the ancient forest

trees, or by the babbling brook and lazy river hath
it sought out an undisturbed retreat; and there its
devotee is to be found, stretched luxuriously along
the green sward, worshipping his divinity after his
own calm and easy fashion. Foolish fellow! up
and away unto the crowded city, for there money,
“the white man's god,” is to be made—spend thy
days in bargaining and wrangling and over-reaching,
and thy nights in scheming and calculating
until thou art worth a million! but rest not, relax
not, toil and bargain and wrangle on, and thou
mayest yet be worth a million and a half! and then
if death some morning put a stop unto thy profitable
speculations, think, for all thy care and anxiety
—thy joyless days and sleepless nights—what a
glorious consolation is thine! The poor idler goes
to his grave not worth a groat, while thou descendest
to thine everlasting rest with more money invested
in the funds than any man on 'change!

“Idleness,” saith the proverb, “is the mother of
mischief.” How strange that such a noisy brawling
urchin should spring from so inoffensive a parent!
For my own part, I have a respect for idle
people; and, when no one suffers by their idleness,
they are the most sensible people on the face of the
earth—your only true philosophers. Love of ease
is natural to man, and industry came into the world

with original sin. Hard work occasioned the first
murder. If Cain, instead of tilling the stubborn
earth and earning his bread “by the sweat of his
brow,” had had nothing to do but lounge on the
mountain-side like his brother Abel, play his pipe,
watch his sheep feeding, and then feed himself, he
would never have envied him, and the second great
transgression would not have come to pass.

That idleness is the natural state of man, cannot
be doubted. Like the flowers of the field it springeth
up without care or culture; but industry is a
hot-house plant, of forced and artificial growth, and
is apt to wither away, if not anxiously tended and
cherished. In asserting these undeniable truths,
let it not be supposed that any reproach is meant
to be cast on the industrious. No—the man who
sacrifices his love of ease, and labors unremittingly
that his wife may be at rest, and his little ones
comfortably clothed and fed—that he may be free
from duns and debts, and walk through the world
fearing and beholden to no living creature—such a
man is worthy of all admiration. But there are
others, who have enough and to spare, but still go
on—the slaves of avarice and habit; who dignify
their love of gain with the name of industry,
and plume themselves mightily on “never being a
single minute idle;” why what are they at best but

miserable earth-worms—voluntary bondmen; the
worldly wise, and yet the most egregious fools!

One thing that has undeservedly brought idleness
into bad repute, is the confounding it with
laziness, than which no two things can be more
different. The lazy sluggard who hates motion in
every shape, and lies upon the earth an inert piece
of animation, is scarcely upon a par with the beasts
that perish. A fine specimen of this tribe was a
fat old gentleman of this city, a prodigious eater,
who, in the summer time, used to sit, by the day
together, smoking and steaming like a caldron.
The only exercise he was ever known to take consisted
in calling out, after he had sat on one seat
long enough to make it uncomfortably warm,
“John, bring me a cool chair!” and then moving
from one chair to the other. Now idle people are
the very reverse of this. In all sorts of games and
sports they are first and foremost. It is they who
can pitch a quoit or bowl a cricket-ball straighter
and truer than any one else; the swiftest runners
and most active wrestlers of the district. It is they
who have roamed the country far and wide, and
know where the finest fishing streams are to be
found, and where the birds are most plentiful—the
healthiest, hardiest, and most venturesome of heaven's
creatures; who will scramble up a precipice,

and risk their necks for a bird's nest, but droop and
pine away under a regular routine of money-making
tasks. There are, however, different varieties
of this species, like every other. Some of a more
contemplative turn, who seek out the pleasant nooks
and shady places, known but to themselves, and
there muse away their hours. These are intimate
acquaintances of nature, and are initiated into thousands
of her little secrets that others know not of;
and with Shakspeare in their hand, they read unfolded
mysteries of mind and matter, that seem,
and are, not the records of observation, but the outpourings
of inspiration. Such an one was Jaques,
though rather too cynical; and, at times, even such
an one must Shakspeare have been. It appears impossible
that the scenes in the forest of Arden could
have been engendered any where except “under
the shade of melancholy boughs.” So thoroughly
are they imbued with a true pastoral spirit, so free
from the noise and smoke of cities, that it is really
strange, after reading “As you like it,” with your
mind filled with images of lonely forest walks, and
their denizens the duke of Amiens and his “comates
and brothers in exile,” to walk to the window
and see so many streets, houses, carriages, and
fantastically dressed men and women. How pitiable
would he be who could afford to dream away
hours amid such scenes, and yet who should forsake
them
Yet idle people are looked upon as the very worst
and “most good-for-nothing” people in existence.
They are under the ban of society. The worldly
father points them out to his son as a warning, and
the prudent mother watches that her marriageable
daughter's eye rests not on them; their names are
stricken from invitation lists; and every griping
scoundrel twitteth them and vaunteth his superior
pack-horse qualifications. And for what?—why,
their comparative poverty and practical philosophy.
Yet they are in one sense the wealthiest of men,

In towns a person of this temperament is altogether
out of his element. He is a connoisseur in
sweet, wholesome air, and sighs to rove about in
search of it. As long as the grizzly tyrant winter
keeps the fair spring in chains, it matters little
where he is; but when one of those glorious days
that herald her approach breaks forth, and nature
becomes, on the instant, all life and animation,
there are few men, let them be as industrious as

they may, who have not experienced his feelings.
Who, on such a day, has not felt a pleasing languor
steal over him, and a distaste for ordinary pursuits
and avocations? Who does not long to leave the
hubbub of the city far behind, to stroll forth into
the fields, and have the taint of the smoke blown
off by the fresh April winds? and who would not
do so if
did not drag him back to his toils? Oh! what a
clog it is on a man's spirit to feel that he is a slave
—(for what are they but slaves with the privilege
of change, whose daily labor buys their daily bread?)
—to long for liberty, yet feel that the pure air, the
green fields, the blue sky, the very commonest gifts
of nature, that are enjoyed by the brutes of the
earth and the birds of the air, are denied to him?
True, he may break through all restraints and go
about inhaling as much fresh air as he pleases;
but when the cravings of appetite hint to him that
it is dinner time, whence are to come the victuals
that constitute that important item in the sum total
of human happiness? Man is unfortunately a carnivorous
animal, and must, once a day at least, be
fed with flesh, fowl, or fish: he cannot make an
unsophisticated repast off the roots and fruits of
the earth, for though

Then why are idle people, who can afford to be
so without wrong to any one, so hardly dealt with,
when all men, deserving the name, would be idle
if they could? Who ever knew a creature that
made use of the too-common expression, “I am
never easy unless I am doing something,” that was
worth passing an hour with, or that showed the
slightest symptoms of having a soul? He cannot
be easy without doing something, merely because
he cannot hold communion with himself; he has
no treasures of thought to which he can revert,
and his mind preys upon itself unless exercised in
the miserable distinctions and petty gains and triumphs
of business, which is at best but a necessary
evil. With a few exceptions, I much admire the
state of things that the old courtier in the Tempest
proposes to introduce into the enchanted island if
he were king of it—