122 A GARDEN DIARY 
Marc 5, 1900 
y arvaiael be praised for a leisurely life! I have 
been visiting A. R. D., whose days are filled 
with large and various activities ; whose responsi- 
bilities are great ; whose hours of work are long ; 
of leisure few and scanty. I admire such indomit- 
able workers, with an admiration which increases 
with every year I live, but I envy them, Oh ye 
gods, not at all! 
“Cling to the peace of obscurity; they shall 
be happy that love thee.” Where, I wonder, 
have I acquired that rather ignominious injunc- 
tion? There is a seventeenth-century flavour 
about it which makes it sound respectable, yet 
at bottom I suppose it is merely a counsel of 
laziness. Work, far from the curse, is the allevia- 
tion of the curse; of that I am ‘as convinced as 
anybody. At the same time a good deal of the 
work that goes on around one seems to be rather 
the product of the unasked volition of the worker, 
than of any violent external necessity. Obscurity 
and laziness moreover are far from interchange- 
