Stand against idleness.
Anything that age, aches, penury, hard trial may inflict on the soul is
trifling. Idleness is the great evil which leads to all others.
Therefore work while it is day.
_September, 1888._
_A REFINEMENT OF "SPORTING" CRUELTY._
I firmly believe in the sound manhood of the English people, and I know
that in any great emergency they would rise and prove themselves true
and gallant of soul; but we happen for the time to have amongst us a
very large class of idlers, and these idlers are steadily introducing
habits and customs which no wise observer can regard without solemn
apprehensions. The simple Southampton poet has told us what "idle hands"
are apt to do under certain guidance, and his saying--truism as it
appears--should be studied with more regard to its vital meaning. The
idlers crave for novelties; they seek for new forms of distraction; they
seem really to live only when they are in the midst of delirious
excitement. Unhappily their feverish unrest is apt to communicate itself
to men who are not naturally idlers, and thus their influence moves
outwards like some vast hurtful wind blown from a pestilent region.
During the past few years the idlers have invented a form of amusement
which for sheer atrocity and wanton cruelty is unparalleled in the
history of England.
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