O now, while health and vigour still remain.
Toil, toil, my lads, to purchase honest gain!
Shun idleness! shun pleasure’s tempting snare!
A youth of revels breeds an age of care.
Reflection.
It is hard to say of laziness or luxury, whether it be the more scandalous, or the more dangerous evil. The very soul of the slothful does but lie drowsing in his body, and the whole man is totally given up to his senses; whereas the profit and the comfort of industry are substantial, firm, and lasting; the blessings of security and plenty go along with it, and it is never out of season. What is the Grasshopper’s entertainment now, but a summer’s song? A vain and empty pleasure? Let it be understood, however, that we are not to pass avarice upon the world under title of good-husbandry and thrift, and thereby utterly to extinguish charity. We are indeed, in the first place, to consult our own necessities; but we are then to consider, in the second, that the necessities of our neighbours have a Christian right to a part of what we have to spare.
The stress of this moral lies upon the preference of honest labour to idleness; and the refusal of relief, on the one hand, is intended only for a reproof to the inconsiderate loss of opportunity on the other. This does not hinder yet, but that the Ants, out of their abundance, ought to have relieved the Grasshopper in her distress, though it was her own fault that brought her to it; for if one man’s faults could discharge another man of his duty, there would be no longer any place left for the common offices of society. To conclude, we have our failings, every one of us; and the improvidence of my neighbour must not make me inhuman. The Ant did well to reprove the Grasshopper for her slothfulness; but she did ill, after that, to refuse her charity in her distress.
