YOU are merely storing sorrow for the future, sages say, if you put off
till tomorrow things which should be done today. When there is a job
unpleasant that it’s up to me to do, I attack it in the present, give a
whoop and push it through; then my mind is free from troubles, and I sit
before the fire popping corn or blowing bubbles, or a-whanging at my
lyre. If I said: “There is no hurry—that old job will do next week,”
there would be a constant worry making my old brain-pan creak. For a man
knows no enjoyment resting at the close of day, if he knows that some
employment is neglected in that way. There is nothing more consoling at
the setting of the sun, when the evening bells are tolling, than the
sense of duty done. And that solace cometh never to the man of backbone
weak who postpones all sane endeavor till the middle of next week. Let
us then be up and doing, with a heart for any fate, as the poet said,
when shooing agents from his garden gate. Let us shake ourselves and
borrow wisdom from the poet’s lay; leaving nothing for tomorrow, doing
all our chores today!
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