OH, ye who complain of the grind, remember these words (which are
true!): The dreariest job one can find is looking for something to do!
Sometimes, when my work seems a crime, and I’m sorely tempted to sob, I
think of the long vanished time when I was out hunting a job. I walked
eighty miles every day, and climbed forty thousand high stairs, and
people would shoo me away, and pelt me with inkstands and chairs. And
then, when the evening grew dark, I knew naught of comfort or ease; I
made me a bed in the park, for supper chewed bark from the trees. I
looked through the windows at men who tackled their oysters and squabs,
and probably grumbled again because they were tired of their jobs. And I
was out there in the rain, with nothing to eat but my shoe, and filled
with a maddening pain because I had nothing to do. And now when I’m
tempted to raise the grand hailing sign of distress, I think of those
sorrowful days, and then I feel better, I guess. I go at my labors again
with energy vital and new, and say, as I toil in my den, “Thank God, I
have something to do!”
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