Imagine a sudden hush in all the myriad sounds of
labor. The ceasing of the whirr of countless wheels whereat men stand
day after day through toilful years, fashioning everything from a pin's
head to a ship's mast; the suspended click of millions of sewing
machines, above which bend delicate women stitching their lives into
shirts and garments that find their way onto bargain tables, where rich
women crowd to seize the advantage of the discount. Let all suspended
hammers in the myriad workshops swing into silence and all footsteps
cease their weary plodding to and fro, I think the awful hush would far
transcend the muteness of midnight or that still hour when dawn steals
in among the pallid stars, and on the dim, uncertain shore of time the
tide of man's vitality ebbs faint and low. There is no blight so fell
as the blight of enforced calm. It is in the unworked garden that
weeds grow. It is in the stagnant water that disease germs waken to
horrid life. Ennui palls upon a brave heart. Ennui is like a
long-winded, amiable, but watery-idea'd friend who drops in to see us
and dribbles platitudes until every nerve is tapped. Ennui is like
being forced to drink tepid water or to eat soup without salt. Labor,
on the contrary, is like a friend with grit and tonic in his make-up.
It comes to us as a wind visits the forest, and sets our faculties
stirring as the wind rustles the leaves and sets the wood fragrance
flying.
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