The Idler

“ Many make a large fortune, who remain underbred and pathetically stupid to the last. And meantime there goes the idler, who began life along with them—by your leave, a different picture. He has had time to take care of his health and his spirits; he has been a great deal in the open air, which is the most salutary of all things for both body and mind ”

“ Those that are curious after diminutive history, who watch the revolutions of families, and the rise and fall of characters either male or female, will hope to be gratified by this paper; for the Idler is always inquisitive and seldom retentive. He that delights in obloquy and satire, and wishes to see clouds gathering over any reputation that dazzles him with its brightness, will snatch up the Idler's essays with a beating heart. The Idler is naturally censorious; those who attempt nothing themselves, think every thing easily performed, and consider the unsuccessful always as criminal. ”

“ Scarcely any name can be imagined from which less envy or competition is to be dreaded. The Idler has no rivals or enemies. The man of business forgets him; the man of enterprise despises him; and though such as tread the same track of life fall commonly into jealousy and discord, Idlers are always found to associate in peace; and he who is most famed for doing nothing, is glad to meet another as idle as himself. ”

“ Like the fabled ships of the ancients, “Incidit in Scyllam qui vult vitare Charybdim”—he who endeavors to avoid Charybdis is drawn into the jaws of Scylla. How many, because of difficulties in their pursuits, become idlers? But who on earth has more trouble than the idler? ”

“ It is the vicious idler, vexed to see the fortunes of his industrious neighbor growing while he is lounging and murmuring, who robs and murders that he may get unlawful gain. It is the merry, thoughtless idler who, to relieve the nothingness of his days, seeks the excitement of the wine-cup and the gaming-table. It is the sensual idler, whose licentious ear is open to the voice of the tempter as often as his track crosses the pathway of youth and innocence. ”

“ If similitude of manners be a motive to kindness, the Idler may flatter himself with universal patronage. There is no single character under which such numbers are comprised. Every man is, or hopes to be, an Idler. Even those who seem to differ most from us are hastening to increase our fraternity; as peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.
There is perhaps no appellation by which a writer can better denote his kindred to the human species. It has been found hard to describe man by an adequate definition. ”

“ He excludes no style, he prohibits no subject; only let him that writes to the Idler remember, that his letters must not be long; no words are to be squandered in declarations of esteem, or confessions of inability; conscious dulness has little right to be prolix, and praise is not so welcome to the Idler as quiet. ”

“ It will be easily believed of the Idler, that if his title had required any search, he never would have found it. Every mode of life has its conveniencies. The Idler, who habituates himself to be satisfied with what he can most easily obtain, not only escapes labours which are often fruitless, but sometimes succeeds better than those who despise all that is within their reach, and think every thing more valuable as it is harder to be acquired. ”

“ The sun was setting when I came on the Idler's deck. There were plenty of bunks below. I did not need to go home. But I wanted to demonstrate to myself how much I was a man. There lay my skiff astern. The last of a strong ebb was running out in channel in the teeth of an ocean breeze of forty miles an hour. ”

“ But the white sail wings are few on the Pond to-day, and the Idler lies on her side in the weeds behind the boathouse. She had to make room for the motor craft. She is too bulky for a flower bed, too convex for a bench. ”

“ What are they all but idlers pure and simple? Idleness, idleness, the tap-root of misery, sin, villainy! Note the gambler at Monte Carlo, watching with tense but impassive face as the red and the black take the advantage by turns—he is an idler. The roaring bookmaker who contaminates the air with his cries, and who grows wealthy on the spoil of fools—he is an idler. The silly beings who crowd into the betting-shops and lounge till morning in the hot air ”

“ And with this question the field of the idler becomes the field of the wise man; and, indeed, if one idles properly—or rather, if the proper person idles—the two fields are not always on opposite sides of the road. ”

“ I am moved by the commiseration with which all human beings ought to behold the distresses of each other, to try some expedients for their relief, and to inquire by what methods the listless may be actuated, and the empty be replenished.
There are said to be pleasures in madness known only to madmen. There are certainly miseries in idleness, which the Idler only can conceive. ”

“ Between Francis and Thomas, however, there was this difference of character: Goodchild was laboriously idle, and would take upon himself any amount of pains and labour to assure himself that he was idle; in short, had no better idea of idleness than that it was useless industry. Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was an idler of the unmixed Irish or Neapolitan type; a passive idler, a born-and-bred idler, a consistent idler, who practised what he would have preached if he had not been too idle to preach ”

“ It may be said that this toil was the pleasure of idle men:—the idlers then were of a distinct race from our own. There is scarcely a person of reputation among them, who has not left such laborious records of himself. ”

“ The Idlers that sport only with inanimate nature may claim some indulgence; if they are useless, they are still innocent; but there are others, whom I know not how to mention without more emotion than my love of quiet willingly admits. ”

“ The idlers, that is to say, all the inhabitants of Boulogne, range themselves outside the ropes on foot, horseback, in carriages, or anyhow, to take the chance of seeing someone they know, to laugh at the melancholy looks of those who have been sick, and to criticise the company, who are turned into the guarded space like a flock of sheep before them. ”

“ Idling always has been my strong point. I take no credit to myself in the matter—it is a gift. Few possess it. There are plenty of lazy people and plenty of slow-coaches, but a genuine idler is a rarity. ”

“ This is to be expected when you arrive late; however, a slap or two on the water with the paddle, and a loud verse of a song, Italian, Dutch, a pibroch, any noise in fact, soon draws the idlers to you, and it is precisely the idlers you want. ”

“ In idler intervals we carved devices upon our powder-horns, cured deer-skins in the Oneida fashion, boiled pitch and mended our canoe, fashioned paddles, poles, and shafts for fish-spears, strung snow-shoes, built a fine sledge out of ash and hickory, and made Kaya draw us on the crust.
So, all day, each was busy with tasks and duties, and had little leisure left for that dull restlessness which, in idle people, is the root of all the mischief they devise to do. ”

“ From idleness. An idler, one who has no regular employment either for his head or hands, is one of the most miserable and contemptible creatures that society can possibly be infested with. Such an one is not only a misery to himself, but exerts also a most pernicious influence upon all with whom he associates. God created man with active energies ”

“ Those persons of whom any duty can be required, who do not stand a watch, but sleep in at night and work during the day, are called idlers. Beside turning out with 'all hands,' the idlers are sometimes called up at night to help the watch on deck in any heavy or difficult duty, when it is not desirable to call the other watch, who may have had severe service. ”

“ An idler is a watch that wants both hands;
As useless if it goes as when it stands. ”

“ The skipper, boatswain, cook, steward, Chips, and Sails keep no watches, and hence are called 'the idlers,' a most misleading term, for they work a good deal harder than their counterparts ashore; though the mates and seamen often work harder still. ”

“ The jockeys, huntsmen, and flunkeys alluded to just now, belong to the class who work, but whose work is all done for the benefit of the idle.
Do not be deceived into supposing that there are but two classes: there are three. Do not believe that the people may be divided into workers and idlers: they must be divided into (1) idlers, (2) workers who work for the idlers, and (3) workers who support the idlers and those who work for the idlers. ”

“ Therefore the idle man was looked on by the holy Fathers, and by heathen philosophers as well, as a corpse, only fit to be buried in the earth. Paulinus once said to the philosopher Seneca, who used to inveigh with special severity against idlers: "But as far as I can see the man whom you condemn as an idler is always busy with some thing or other ”

“ We have seen such a man loitering along his idle day in streets, promenades, or coffee-houses; or sometimes squandering time and money at the gambling-table, a victim because an idler. The objects of nature and art, which originally interested him, cease altogether to do so. ”

“ The wooing of those days was prompt and practical. There was no time for the gradual approaches of an idler and more conventional age. It is related of one Stout, one of the legendary Nimrods of Illinois, who was well and frequently married, that he had one unfailing formula of courtship. He always promised the ladies whose hearts he was besieging that "they should live in the timber where they could pick up their own firewood." ”

“ Being disengaged, his mind is more observant and more retentive of the by-play of life, which is the only amusing part of it, than that of one of the chief actors can possibly be. Moreover, idlers are the natural confidants of the busy: they are consulted, made useful as go-betweens, entrusted with those little services which, being transient and disconnected, are precisely suited to their disposition and secure them a place in the economy of Nature. Mr. Wikoff has been a model idler, with large opportunities of this description. ”

“ The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild followed, the mournful Idle brought up the rear. From time to time, the two foremost members of the expedition changed places in the order of march; but the rearguard never altered his position. Up the mountain or down the mountain, in the water or out of it, over the rocks, through the bogs, skirting the heather, Mr. Thomas Idle was always the last, and was always the man who had to be looked after and waited for. ”

“ A few inert and dispirited men lounged on the tavern steps with that look of fossilized idleness which is peculiar to rural New England. In other countries, idlers look as if they were idling because they liked it ”

“ In summer time its pumps suggest to thirsty idlers springs cooler and more sparkling and deeper than other wells; and as they trace the spillings of full pitchers on the heated ground, they snuff the freshness, and, sighing, cast sad looks towards the Thames, and think of baths and boats, and saunter on, despondent. ”

“ Jingle, tinkle, rattle, rumble through the glittering, shimmering street,
Hark to coach and carriage chiming with the pattering tramp of feet!
Crop-haired waiters run white-aproned to the call of ringing glass,
Lazy idlers, round small tables, eyeing idlers as they pass.
All the air is heated, heavy, gritty ”

“ With his early savings (as a sloop-skipper and steamboat pilot) , he bought the river farm of which Idlewild was a part, and has since turned everything to account within reach—supplying Newburgh and New York with shad and bass in immense quantities by his skillful hauling and netting, growing the best fruit, stopping the drift-timber after the freshets, killing more wild game than all the other neighbors together, raising famous grain, breeding the best fowls and pigs, and—taking summer boarders. ”

“ Of course when the industrious people were unsuccessful, these idlers were obliged to work for their living, which, being unaccustomed to do anything energetic, they found it hard and difficult to do, and generally regarded themselves as the harshly used victims of a tyrannous fate.
There was one thing, however, at which these idlers were very expert and diligent—they begged well, and with persistency. No wonder; for their lives often depended on their persistent and successful begging. ”

“ If I should ever become a dryad I should choose to be transformed into a white birch.
The chief occupation of our idle days on the Grande Décharge was fishing. Above the camp spread a noble pool, more than two miles in circumference, and diversified with smooth bays and whirling eddies, sand beaches and rocky islands. The river poured into it at the head, foaming and raging down a long chûte, and swept out of it just in front of our camp in a merry, musical rapid. It was full of fish of various kinds—long-nosed pickerel, wall-eyed pike, and stupid chub. ”

“ In house-boats of all possible sizes, shapes, heights, depths, and stenches these idlers and triflers have lived and trained their sons and daughters to live. Their staple means of existence has been fishing and filching, and, while living, are seemingly the happiest of people and no questions asked. ”

“ On the beach one feels most keenly the actuality of much of the idyls, and finds the continuousness of the human life that enters into them. No idyl appeals so directly to modern feeling, I suspect, as does that of the two fishermen and the dream of the golden fish. Go down to the shore; you will find the old men still at their toil, the same implements, the same poverty, the same sentiment for the heart. ”