From most painful study I have come to the
conclusion that nearly all of our degraded men come to ruin through
idleness in the first instance; drink, gambling, and other forms of
debauch follow, but idleness is the root-evil. The man who begins by
saying, "It's a poor heart that never rejoices," or who refers to the
danger of making Jack a dull boy, is on a bad road. Who ever heard of a
worker--a real toiler--becoming degraded? Worn he may be, and perhaps
dull to the influence of beauty and refinement; but there is always some
nobleness about him. The man who gives way to idleness at once prepares
his mind as a soil for evil seeds; the universe grows tiresome to him;
the life-weariness of the old Romans attacks him in an ignoble form,
and he begins to look about for distractions. Then his idleness, from
being perhaps merely amusing, becomes offensive and suspicious; drink
takes hold upon him; his moral sense perishes; only the husks of his
refinement remain; and by and by you have the slouching wanderer who is
good for nothing on earth. He is despised of men, and, were it not that
we know the inexhaustible bounty of the Everlasting Pity, we might
almost think that he was forgotten of Heaven.
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