The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1906-12-01
THE MASTER VICE
ALL EVILS HAVE THEIR ROOT IN
REORGANIZATION.
Slave to the Habit MoraIizes and An
nounees His concIusions-Can
Never Rise Above the Rank
of Plodder.

The bane of my existence, said the
procrastinating man, has been my
habit of putting things on. never do
to-day what can put on till to-mor
row.
The result is that am always put
ting on and never doing any more
than is necessary for my current daily
hand to mouth support; and so, as the
saying Is, / never have anything.
am not independent, but always de-
pendent upon somebody else for the
30 l can never say my soul is my own.
/ must do the work l am set to do by
some stronger man, whether 1 like 1t
or not. and SO plod along, just get
ting through, while the man who col
lars things gets ON.
"Of late years az / have come to
realize its evil effects and the enor-
nous difficulty of overcoming 1t have
come to think that the master vice OF
all Is procrastination. Ane coming to
think thus has disturbed me a little,
because have to give up an originally
preconceived and long cherished no
ton.
Il had long held that the most near
ly ineradicable of personal vices was
gambling, but now l thought the most
difficult of all vices to cure oneself OF
was that of procrastination. Was /
! wrong then? And could 1t be that ]
was wrong now?
This, / say, disturbed me little;
but now on this point rest quite easy.
For l have discovered, contradictory as
this, at first thought, might seem, l
have discovered that was right then
and that am right now.
For now / discover that the vice OF
gambling is but another phase of, or
at least the outcrop of, that of pro-
| crastination. The great majority of
those given over to gambling hope to
| get something for nothing; they hope
to get money without effort. They put
| on from day to day the hard, unfiinch-
ing work that would give them sure
thing, without chances, on the race
of life, and make just enough to in
dulge their vice and their vain hopes.
so gambling is really but form. or
outcome, of the vice of procrastina-
ton. And by the same line of reason
ing suppose we might say the same
Of drunkenness, which is essentially
q procrastinating vice; we put things
on to-day, to-day we win drink; we
will work tomorrow.
"And don't know but what we
should find that every Ill proceeds
from the vice of procrastination: and
so this, which might seem but a form
of laziness, is really the master vice;
and am one of it's most closely bound
victims. don't drink, and / don't
gamble; but have got the fatal habit
of putting things of.
Inertia, dullness. lack of power
, from want of exercise, come from II
the procrastinating man is always
at the same dead low level. He is al
ways going to do something. never do
ing it; just pulling through with the
work he has to do, and gaining CORE
spondingly small rewards. He never
knows the joy of doing things moi
gathers in its profits, but habit bound
he settles down In lifelong slavery.
And / am one of those victims! DC
casionally l do rouse up and do some
thing out of my set routine, and in thu
accomplishment of some rugged tasl
that thus take up find great new
joy and pride; and am going to keeI
this up; but next day / sink to the oil
level again, and stay there; it is 81
much easier to put things on than Il
do things, and this, the trunk ba,
habit of which all others are bu
branches, is SO deep rooted.
But / am not without hope. / hav'
Topped on those branches Of which
spoke, and / am prying, prying arount
the roots Of the trunk"