Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1874-04-16

life, but how to get rid of this perpetual
hurry and drive, this galloping to the end
OF Journey, only to mount a fresh steed
and gaIlop on the next stage; the clatter
OF the horses hOofs becoming an accom-
paniment to all ones thoughts. There is
certainly something ignominious in the
confession which people are constantly
making that they have no time to do this
or that needful thing, and that they shall
| breathe more freely if they can once clear
! their desk, or finish this job, or wipe out
this obligation. One comes to feel that
| Time has been borrowed from, and that
ones notes are perpetually maturing,
While one makes vain effort to cancel
them by giving fresh notes. We turn
round in helpless sort of fashion, and
| berate the age we live in, with its whiz-
! Zing locomotives and its clicking tele-
graphs, as if the punctuality of railroad
| trains and the observation-disclosures of dis
! patches were not the very friends and ser
| wants of honest leisure.
! 1t would be idle to lay down a set OF
| rules by which one might hope to exor-
! else this evil demon of haste and unrest.
but one would take much pains if
he could hope TO persuade the unhappy
man of hurry that the fault was all his
which he set about his work; that, in
short, hurry was an evil spirit, to be exor-
| cised by whatever power is mighty
enough to control it. 1t is among men of
| business that it shows itself most clearly,
while it is most offensive when displayed
in the life of men of thought. Business
and hurry, so far from being necessary
| partners, are opposed to each other by the
most violent contrast. 1t may safely be
said that the most successful men of bust
| ness are the least hurried, for hurry is an
open transgression of the law of order, and
order is tie foundatiOn-stOne of business
house. And there we touch the secret of
leisurely life, one which has free play,
without this incessant push from behind.
He who orders his life, and refuses
to be carried along by the nearest
current; who holds his purposes
as sacred and does not lightly allow
himself to be turned from them;
who has the will to refuse work, in spite
OF that most intolerable complaint, the
suspicion Of being shirk-it is he who
can hope bravely to live life of leisure
Is it not pitiable to see one who, through
his very anxiety to do everything which
circumstance seems to lay on his broad
back, comes to be the very thrall of cir
cumstance, and starts at every shadow
which seems to whisper that he is not
faithful? He wears his life away to
fretful existence in the vain attempt to
leave nothing undOne, when it would
have been nObler to leave much undone
which has been done ILL., He disappoints
his masters by the excess of his endeavOr,
yet none is so disappointed as himself, for
the solace Of having tried to do what one
has not done is a mockery. 1t is doing
which brings comfort.
Along with the spirit of order which
leads one to arrange his work so that it
shall not be always at his heels, and the
courage which makes him refuse to do
what he cannot do well, though he be sus-
pected of shirking-that most hateful
! thing to his soul-there is also the ele-
ment, which indeed is but the
spirit Of order and of courage
combined, of resolute reserve Of leisure.
Forster, in his account of Dickens, has
touched upon the fundamental weakness
of that sad life, the absence of any city
of the mind " to which he could flee for
refuge from the incessant pressure of the
actual and real upon him. It is, we hold,
a necessity for every man of business to
have and guard jealousy some period OF
each day which shall be consecrated to
leisure-the leisure Of books, or of gentle
society, or of nature, or of worship. The
| last is essential; the others are grateful
aids. In this shelter he has a chance to
set his watch by the heavenly bodies, and
when he issues forth, into whatever thicket
of men or affairs he may plunge he will
at any rate be himself and not the slave
of necessity. There is no need of hurry,
for hurry is at variance with freedom;
and the need that men have is of freedom.
So it comes to pass that in a hurrying
age the man of leisure is the man of hope,
and the end of the world to him is the
opening OF fairer prospect for that which
even now lies IN his grasp.-EDery Sat
UrdGg.