West Virginia argus. [volume] (Kingwood, W. Va.) 1877-1946, 1877-09-22
A Tramp's View OF Idleness.

Pack
! lie came in slowly and lahoriouslv,
I II five tons of weariness were weighing
down his spirits.
lie dropped heavily into a chnir,
sighed several four-foot sighs. and then
bombarded us with the following conun-
| drum:
What is idlenessV What does il
consist ofT'
Don't know. Never experienced IL.
Now, some people would call doing
nothing idleness, wouldn't thcyg"
suppose they would
Yes; and that's where some people
make a mistake. There is no such thing
as idlencss. No man is ever wholly
idle; This body isn't busy, his brain is.
iknow that III man sits around and
shows disinclination 10 work, folkswill
call him n tramp and cucumber of
the ground, as Shakespeare says; but il
don't make any difference. IL isn't So,
and can produce plenty of proof To
sustain the position take in the matter.
Now, for instance, who ever heard of
Napoleon getting up at five o'clock i'm
the morning and starting out To the
field with hoe over his shoulder, or
chasing n sidchill plow around n field
fourteen hours n day? Did Napoleon
ever do thatY'
"Neycr heard that he did"
No, sir; he laborcd with his intel
lect, and when he had any real work To
perform, thousands of men were ready to
do his bidding that's the sort of n man
Napoleon was. He never sawed n cord
of wood or did hard days work in his
life and yet he was never arrested for
vagrancy, and no interfering policeman
ever came nosing around and told him to
move along or the hand of the law would
snatch him to the jug.
80 Then look at Diogencsl What sort
of man was he? On the unbalanced
ledger of history do we find on the credit
side any entry of this kind:
"DiogcncS Or.
NY one days work...... ..,..".,.........ti .OO2
Nothing of the sort. Dogcnes was
man who took the world easy. The
only thing that he ever did that we have
any record of was roaming around the
streets of Syracuse with an old tin Ian
tern in his hand. lie pretended to he
looking for an honest man. Morelikcly
he was mapping out free lunch route
30 much for Diogcncs.
Now turn over another page and
glance mt the portrait of Sir Isaac New
ton. Wasn't / he a thoroughbred tramp?
All he did was to sit out i'm his garden
under an apple-trcc, smoke his old clay
pipe, and build castles in the air. One
day an apple fell off the tree and struck
Sir Isaac square in the eye. The cir
cumstance made him famous. Why?
Because he was genuine, philosophical
tramp, and took things coolly. When
the apple hit him he didn't get mad and
H.. Il a A
around through the atmosphere, or any
thing of the sort He simply picked the
apple up, looked IL over carefully for
worm-holes, and slipped it in his pocket
To eat after supper. Then he began To
wonder why the apple didn't go up in
stead of falling down to the ground.
You sec, before that he never had paid
any attention TO the matter, and he
didn't know whether il was the usual
and correct thing for fruit To fly off ut "A
tangent from the earth when il became
detached from the tree, or To come down,
like Col. Crocketts coon. lie deter
mined to investigate. So he hired
small boy TO climb the tree and shake,
aud he watched till every apple fell To
the ground. None Of them flew up. Sir
Isaac was satisfied. lie had made great
discovery. The next day he cut out a
basswood model of an apple-tree with a
half-grown pippin just in the act Of
starting on voyage TO the earth, and
sent it on TO Washington and had his
discovery patented. This made Sir
Isaac noted man. When little thing
like that lifts man up and plants him
on the pinnacle OF fame, isn't it an en-
| couragement for us all 10 sit around and
wait to be hit by something2 If I
wanted to, / could go and work for
railroad at thirty-fve cents day, and
board myself, but / won't do il. I'll
hang around and wait for. an opportli-
nifty. Ny intellect will have a chance
to show itself some time and if you hear
Of anybody waking up and startling
the world within the next fifteen or
twenty years, you'll know it's me. Ia,
ta."
And the weary man arose and slowly
glided fOrth-neyer, we hope, to return.