CHAPTER LXX.
SHEWING THAT ANY HONEST OCCUPATION IS BETTER THAN NONE, BUT THAT OCCUPATIONS WHICH ARE DEEMED HONOURABLE ARE NOT ALWAYS HONEST.
J'ai peine à concevoir pourquoi le plûpart des hommes ont une si forte envie d'être heureux, et une si grande incapacité pour le devenir.
VOYAGES DE MILORD CETON.
“Happy,” said Dr. Dove, “is the man, who having his whole time thrown upon his hands makes no worse use of it than to practise eight hours a day upon a bad fiddle.” It was a sure evidence, he insisted, that Mr. Staniforth's frame of mind was harmonious; the mental organ was in perfect repair, though the strings of the material instrument jarred; and he enjoyed the scientific delight which Handel's composition gave him abstractedly, in its purity and essence.
“There can now,” says an American preacher,1 “be no doubt of this truth because there have been so many proofs of it; that the man who retires completely from business, who is resolved to do nothing but enjoy himself, never attains the end at which he aims. If it is not mixed with other ingredients, no cup is so insipid, and at the same time so unhealthful, as the cup of pleasure. When the whole enjoyment of the day is to eat and drink and sleep, and talk and visit, life becomes a burden too heavy to be supported by a feeble old man, and he soon sinks into the arms of spleen, or falls into the jaws of death.”
1 FREEMAN'S Eighteen Sermons.