THRESHOLDS.
IF the story of the Fall were to be rewritten to-day, the curse of Adam would be, we think, reversed. He would find himself outside Paradise—and out of work. A terrible fuss followed the change of scientific theory which made men disbelieve in "the six days' employ." It was perhaps a greater change of conviction which led them to exalt the primeval curse into a blessing. It took place quietly, no one quite knows when, but it has altered the face of the Western world. Work is now the universal ideal, as well as the almost universal necessity. Everybody knows that everybody else ought to work. No one condemns the loafer more heartily than the man of leisure, and we imagine that his condemnation is returned. Most men go farther than this, and in the fervour of their faith declare that if a man does not find happiness in his work he will never find it. This, for our park, we doubt. It is one of the things which ought to be and are not. By work we do not, of course, mean a little occupation; we mean toil, the sweat of a man's brow or brain.
On the whole, the new view of work is perhaps the truest. But there are times when one feels, more inclined to agree with the author of Genesis than with Dr. Watts. Satan is not engaged only with the unemployed, and as we gaze upon the faces of the work-sodden multitude in the poorest quarters of our largest cities, incapable, as these faces so often seem, of an expression of gaiety and unused to the portrayal of love or of aspiration, we wonder whether his ostentatious association with the lazy and the leisured is, not somewhat in the nature of a blind. Overwork is not morally beneficial. Meanwhile, it is generally admitted that the happiest time of life comes before we know the real stress of hard work, and we believe that there might be a very happy time towards the end if we did not from choice or necessity put off the last long holiday so very late. The modern ambition to die in harness, is unnatural. A man should aim at several years of quiet enjoyment before he loses his strength. As the Caesar (Diocletian) said, he should put "an interval between life and death."
Youth is, of course, the age of hopes and chances. But that is not the only reason why it is happy. It is free from the stress of work. Health, energy, the great possibilities of luck and of love, delight young men and maidens; but if we analyse their happiness we mast give a large place to the fact that they are not yet hard at work. More free than late childhood, early childhood is very happy, even among the very poor, almost perfectly happy among the rich. Later on school means work, or at the very least, and for the moat energetic: resister of instruction, it means the organization of the hours of play to order. If you look at a crowd of schoolboy faces, happiness is not their most marked expression. Too many of them have a strained look. They have lost the look of gaiety which makes the faces of young children such a refreshment to the beholder, and they have not got that other look of happiness which comes later. Young children do dimly realize the existence of sorrow, pain, and illness. What they do not realize is the oppression of work ; at any rate, the children of the brain-worker do not realize it. Later on, when the boy goes to school, he slowly learns it, and it takes something out of him. Girls keep their childish happiness longer, renew it more noticeably in later youth, and in rare instances even keep it through life. Of course we are only speaking of those women who lead a completely sheltered existence, and who, though they may have known sorrow, have not known care. Oddly enough, no one looks forward to work with fear. The young man only sees its possibilities, its successes; or, if he must work where there are no chances of success, its remuneration, the few hours of leisure, the amusements or the delights of family life of which it is the price. When the work comes, with its monotonous leaden weight, it crashes something in the character, though it doubtless gives a good deal in its place. Something is killed by training, first in the boy when he goes to school, then in the young man when he goes to work. It is the threshold days which are really happy. Of course work brings a happiness of its own. The mere accom- plishment of tasks is productive of pleasure, and much work is deeply interesting, and perhaps never becomes dull. Even if it is not interesting, it gives a meaning to life; and if it is a source of happiness in no other sense, it is at least the only known anodyne in times of bitter distress. One has to remember also that there is something intrinsically pleasant in the habitual Homesickness can be explained on no other theory, and the longing of demented persons for the home from which they believe themselves exiles is a sad witness to our natural devotion to the daily round. Even the men who have not greatly enjoyed their life's work hesitate to give it up until they are obliged. It is rather sad to do anything for the Rat time. We believe that feeling is at the bottom of a great deal of unwise clinging to work. Hen quote the saying, now almost become a proverb, about wearing out and rusting out. It is a saying in which there cannot be very much truth, Many people will not stop work till they are nearly done for, and somehow the effect of the strain does not show itself till it is over. Then they flag, and, being past recuperation, they flag on for years—" rusting out," in their own phrase. But if men could or would retire a little earlier than they do, the threshold of old age should be a delightful time. Hope is over, it is true, but so are great disappointments, and we may fairly argue that we know the worst.
Ambition crushes many sources of happiness when we are young. We avoid doing this, that, or the other thing because we cannot do it very well. But perhaps it is something from which we might get very great enjoyment if we were content to do it in a mediocre way. Very small artistic gifts offer endless pleasure to those who have leisure to cultivate them and sufficient simplicity to be content with small achievements. Meanwhile the world is always young, and Nature just as beautiful as when the old were young with her.
All their working lives men and women regret the pleasures for which they have no time. Nearly all these are pleasures which require no great strength, and which they might quite well enjoy upon the threshold of old age if they would. It is true that "old Anglo-Indians," who might be expected to enjoy life on the threshold of old age more than most people, seeing they retire early and have an assured income, usually seem to find it very dull. But we doubt whether "old Anglo-Indians" are really a case in point. Return from a long exile is often very much like a second exile, and exile in old age is very sad. Self-absorption is a failing to which the temptation grows lees as years go on. In the heyday of life it is natural and inevitable that our own affairs should come first, should preoccupy us to a very great extent; but when the strain is over, and the race over, and the winners have got their prizes, even those who have proved themselves out of the running can rest as pleasantly as the victors. Then there is time to see the fine sights and humours of the world. It is too late, perhaps, to begin a hobby, but it is the right time to pursue one. Friendship, too, can be cultivated with far more care and persistence than are possible in earlier life, and young people, who distrust the middle-aged on account of a certain aroma of authority which clings about them, are often very glad of the friendship of those upon the threshold of old age. When real old age comes there is not energy left for new
doings. At best it is a state in which we must feel tired without work to show for the feeling. But upon its threshold memories may be stored which will be of great value when active life belongs to the past. At any rate, it would be a gain that in middle life a man should be able to look forward as well as backward to the delights of leisure.
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