wind.

XLV.

JUST A LITTLE TIRED!

What a grubby old stopping place this world is, anyway. How hard we
have to work just to keep the flesh on our bones and that flesh
covered, even with nothing better than homespun. And we are getting a
little tired of it all, aren't we, my dear? Just a little tired of the
treadmill, where, like a sheep in a dairy, we pace our limited beat to
bring a handful of inadequate butter. We have trudged to and fro about
long enough, and have half a mind to throw up the contract with fate.
But hold on a bit. There is something worse than too much work, and
that is idleness. Imagine a sudden hush in all the myriad sounds of
labor. The ceasing of the whirr of countless wheels whereat men stand
day after day through toilful years, fashioning everything from a pin's
head to a ship's mast; the suspended click of millions of sewing
machines, above which bend delicate women stitching their lives into
shirts and garments that find their way onto bargain tables, where rich
women crowd to seize the advantage of the discount. Let all suspended
hammers in the myriad workshops swing into silence and all footsteps
cease their weary plodding to and fro, I think the awful hush would far
transcend the muteness of midnight or that still hour when dawn steals
in among the pallid stars, and on the dim, uncertain shore of time the
tide of man's vitality ebbs faint and low. There is no blight so fell
as the blight of enforced calm. It is in the unworked garden that
weeds grow. It is in the stagnant water that disease germs waken to
horrid life. Ennui palls upon a brave heart. Ennui is like a
long-winded, amiable, but watery-idea'd friend who drops in to see us
and dribbles platitudes until every nerve is tapped. Ennui is like
being forced to drink tepid water or to eat soup without salt. Labor,
on the contrary, is like a friend with grit and tonic in his make-up.
It comes to us as a wind visits the forest, and sets our faculties
stirring as the wind rustles the leaves and sets the wood fragrance
flying. It puts spice in our broth and ice in our drink. It puts a
flavor in life that starts an appetite, or, in other words, awakens
ambition. Although the world is full of toilers it would be worse off
were it full of idlers. Good, hard workers find no time to make
mischief. Your anarchists and your breeders of discord are never found
among busy men; they breed, like mosquitoes, out of stagnan