Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-08-04
The Curse Of Idleness,

UenUer Tribune.
The Curse Of Idleness.
That several of the officers of the
army, who spend most of their DAYS in
ldleness at Washington, have fallen i'm
to vicious habits and criminal practices,
for which they will be disgraced, should
not occasion much surprise. That two
young men in New York city, the sons
OF respectable and enterprising mer-
chants. have been d%isgracing them.
selves is too common an occurrence tn
provoke comment. That the SON Of
one of the most successful railroad
managers the country has ever known
should lose $4,000 in a single stake at
gambling is not remarkable. They are
all natural results of lives which are not
devoted to any useful ~avocation or en-
ployment. If these army officers had
1ull occupation, or if they had sufficient
interest in the art of war to make it q
study, they would not have become
professional gamblers. If the two
young men in New York, like their
fathers. had been obliged to devote
themselves to business day after day,
they would have been equally respect
able, and would have had neither time
nor inclination to get into a quarrel at
a public place and to connect their
names with idle and disreputable Cos
sip. Such young men are doubly un-
fortunate, because they are not only the
victims of aimless idleness, but have the
means to make that idleness tenfold
more disreputable than it would be if
they were simply street-corner loafers.
Indeed, those who make a study of the
matter will come to the conclusion that
if idleness was not the primal cause, it
has since been the III of much of the
misery and crime which exist. And vet
most people long for a condition where
they will not be obliged to toll or to be
hampered by responsibility. Ali the
experience of men has not taught the
human rae that a life of full employ
ment is not only the freest from tempta-
ton, but affords the most solid salts
faction. The man or woman who has
never had regular employment has
never enjoyed the better part of exist
ence.
Thousands, it is true, are compelled
to.toil SO early and so late all their lives
that they seem to have no time for
enjoyment still, the feeling that hap
piness can only be found in idleness
makes employment irksome and toll
servitude. And yet such a life is a
hundred fold better than one of aimless
Incidence, since in the former there are
brief respites which the overworked can
enjoy with a keenness to which the pro-
fessional loafer is a stranger. Idleness
and Incidence are vices from the pun
ishment of which there Is no escape.
Through Incidence the most brilliant
genius falls into decay through disuse
as well as misuse, while the steady,
%purposeful plodder, with meager talents,
is sure to reach a respectable position
in life, and to realize something of re-
ward. We have no better illustration
of this than in the case of thousands of
men who have achieved success and
fortunes in u large cities and towns.
Born in poverty, by courage, persever-
ance and tact they have not only ac-
quired wealth, but power and influence.
The fathers of the young men, to which
reference has been made, an exchange
says, were men of responsibility, who
acquired fortunes and position by char
acter and industry. They began life
with a purpose. On the other hand,
they allowed their sons to grow up in
idleness, without aim or purpose in life,
except to have a "dooced good time"
Their punishment has been sure and
great. They are lacking in every attri-
butte of stalwart manhood their heads
are full of conceits and notions which
the %full-grown nan despises, and their
lives are devoted to objects which to
people at large make them the objects
of ridicule. Had they been put to the
serious pursuits in which their fathers
became respectable and influential, they
would in all probability have been
equally respectable and influential, but,
having been inspired by no purpose,
they have become in the parlance of the
day "dudes." These are most striking
illustrations of the curse of idleness,
but it is sure to fall upon those who
give themselves up to it, whether they
live in palace or hovel.-Boston Journal.
1t is said that the first vessel built
in the United States was the Virginia,
constructed on the coast of Maine in
the same year in which the State Of
Virginia was settled, and that she was
thirty tons burthen, and made regular
round trips across the Atlantic. This
was seven years before the Unrest, or
the Restless, was built by Adrian Block
in New York Bay. AS early as 1929
the Massachusetts Bay Company picked
our shipwrights, the chief of whom was
Robert Moulton, and sent them to New
England. The oldest name in Ameri-
can shipbuilding is Hollingsworth, and
as early as 1885 Richard Hollingsworth
built ships of as heavy tonnage as 800
tons.-Chicago Journal.
The cell in La Roquette, Paris, in