Devils Lake inter-ocean and Devils Lake free press. (Devils Lake, Ramsey County, N.D.) 1905-1909, 1906-11-02
THE SFEEa
AL EVILS HAVE TtiEiR RooTsiHs
REPRESENTATION.
Slave TO the Habit Moraiizes and An
r,ounces His Conclusions Can
Never Rise Above the HANK
OF Plodder,

L
The bane of my existence said the
procrastinating man. s.has been my
habit of putting things of. never do
today what E can put off till to-mor.
row. .s # SD
The result is that am always put
ting off 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
work that will enable me to live, and
SO can never say my soul is my own.
must do the work I am set to do by
some stronger man, whether / like 1t
or not. and so plod along, just get,
ting through, while the man who col.
lars things gets ON.
OF late years as I have come to
realize its evil effects and the enor-
nous difficulty of overcoming it j have
come to. think that the master vice of
all is procrastination And coming to
think thus has disturbed me little,
because have to give up an originally
preconceived and long cherished mo-
| ton. 81 SO
7 had long held that the mos. near
" 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 i
was wrong now? ~
This, say, disturbed me nttle;33
but now on this point rest quite easy.
For have discovered, contradictory as
this, at first thought, might seem, 4
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
of 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
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
OF to-day, to-day we will drink; we
will work tomorrow.
And / don't know but what we
should find that every Ill proceeds
from the vice Of representation: and
80 this. which might seem but a form
of laziness, Is really the master vice;
and am one OF Its most closely bound
victims. don't drink, and + don't
gamble; but have got the fatal habit
Of putting things of. 81. VA!
Inertia, dullness, lack Of power
from want Of exercise, come from III
the procrastinating man is always
at the same dead low level. He Is al.
ways going to do something, never do.
ing 1t; 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.
he settles down In lifelong slavery.
And I am one Of those victims! oc.
casionally / do rouse up and do some
thing out Of my set routine, and IN the
accomp lishment Of some rugged task
that ] thus take up I 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; 1t is so
much easier to put things of than to
do things, and this, the trunk bad
habit Of which all others are but
branches, Is so deep rooted. III.
But am not without hope. i have
topped of those branches Of which /
spoke, and / am prying. prying around
the roots OF the trunk. !, &
The Little Girls Mistake.
/ The amateur photographer had
alighted from his atitomobile III &
country town to Kget aScertain view.
just as he had his camera arranged
an Ice wagon swung into the thorough.
II 49,