Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1906-11-14
THE MASTER VICE.
ALL EVILS HAVE THEIR ROOT w
REPRESENTATION.
Slave to the Habit Moralizes and An
nounces His Conclusions-can
Never Rise Above the Rank
of Plodder.


1.-THE bane of my existence" said the
procrastinating man, has been my
habit of putting things OF. l never do
to-day what l can put OF till to-mor-
row.
The result Is that am always put
ting of and never doing any more
than is necessary for my current daily
saying is, never have anything. I
am not independent, but always de
PENDENT upon somebody else for the
work that will enable me to live. and
80 can never say my soul is my own.
| must do the work am set. to do by
some stronger man, whether l like IL
or not, and so 1 plod along, just get
ting through, while the man who co.
lars things gets on.
of late years as / have come to
realize its evil effects and the enor-
nous difficulty of overcoming it have
come to think that the master vice of
all is procrastination. And coming to
think thus has disturbed me a little.
because have to give up an originally
preconceived and long cherished mo-
ton.
Il had long held that the most near
ly ineradicable of personal vices was
gambling, but now thought the most
difficult of all vices to cure oneself OF
was that of procrastination. Was
wrong then? And could it be that
was wrong now?
"This, l say, disturbed me a little:
but now on this point / rest quite easy
For have discovered, contradictory as
this. at first thought, might seem,
have discovered that l was right then.
and that I 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
off 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 I suppose we might say the same
of drunkenness, which is essentially
procrastinating vice; we put things
off to-day, to-day we will drink; we
will work tomorrow.
"And I don't know but what We.
should find that every i'll proceeds
from the vice of procrastination; and
so this, which might seem but form
of laziness, is really the master vice:
and 1 am one of its most closely bound
victims. l don't drink, and 1 don't
gamble; but have got the fatal habit
of putting things off.
Inertia, dullness, lack of power
from want of exercise, come from il
the procrastinatng 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 nor
gathers in its profits, but habit bound I.
he settles down in lifelong slavery.
And I am one of those victims! DC
casionally do rouse up and do some
thing out of my set routine, and in tho
accomplishment of some rugged task
that l thus take up 1 find great new
joy and pride; and am going to keep
this up; but next day sink to the old
level again, and stay there; it is so
much easier to put things off than to
do things, and this, the trunk bad
habit of which all others are bnt
| branches, is so deep rooted.
| But am not without hope / have
Topped off those branches of which 2
spoke, and am prying, prying around
the roots of the trunk"