18 



OUR COLUMNS. 



June 20, 1891. 



Cf)e O0e of a litirarg* 



By Rev. James Copnee, M.A. 



^^IVEN a fair share of health and worldly prosperity, what more do we require to 

 promote our happiness ? Why, we need congenial occupation. An idle man, 

 ^ no matter how enviable his lot in other respects may be, can never be a thoroughly 

 happy man. 



' ' A want of occupation is not rest, 



A mind quite vacant is a mind opprest." 



Well ; what w^e chiefly need for happiness is occupation. But what sort of occupation ? 

 When it is said that a man has " no occupation," what is meant is, that he has no reguhir 

 occupation, not that he leads a life of absohite vacuity. Indeed, he could not do so if he 

 w^ould. Those Avho have no regular occuj^ation — provided they are not consummate idiots 

 — will be sure to be irregularly occupied in some form or other of bodily or mental 

 activity. They cannot exist in absolute indolence. Hence we find young men, when 

 liberated from their regular occupations, devising, as they express it, expedients for 

 " killing time." Of course, if their pursuits on such occasions are of an innocent 

 character, no fault can be found with them on account of this ; for some agreeable mode 

 or another of occupying their time they must necessarily find, or vacant days, when thej^ 

 have them, will aifford them more plague than pleasure. Whether it be in the shape of 

 work, or in the shape of amusement, in order to be happy, occupation we must get. A 

 prisoner imdergoing solitary confinement in the Ba stile, for want of better occupation, 

 used to scatter pins about the floor, and then pick them up again, and make various 

 devices with them on the arms of a chair which stood in his cell. He pined for something 

 to do, and in this strange expedient he found it. Had he spent his time in complete 

 inactivity, he professed he would have gone mad. 



Dr. Johnson used to speak of a wealthy London tallow-chandler, who, having amassed a 

 competent fortune, retired from trade, and Avent, as he supposed, to pass the remainder of 

 his days in ease and enjoyment in a comfortable mansion in the country, But, alas, he 

 was doomed to disappointment. He had no stated pursuits, and grew increasingly 

 miserable. Being unable to endure this sort of existence any longer, he at last formed the 

 singular resolution of returning to his melting vats to drudge amongst his successor's 

 workmen. And this he actually did, as a pastime rather than a labour, to relieve the 

 tedium that oppressed him. 



Now had this chandler only had a soul above candles, he might surely have devised 

 some more intellectual, or as it would apjDcar to most of us, some more agreeable 

 employment to occupy the remainder of his days. But as it happened he could not, 

 he certainly acted a wiser part than those do, who, finding indolence a burden, 

 yet take no steps to be relieved of it, A man to be happy should have congenial pursuits 

 to turn to at all times as occasion needs. If he has no professional work to engage him, 

 he should take up some other work. Amusements are all very well in their way, but, if 

 carried to excess, they pall upon the taste. It is not so, however, with literature. That 

 of all resources is the best, and in this age of intelligence, no one need pine for the lack 

 of it. The printing-press teems with literary M^orks of every description and variety. 

 Many of them no doubt are trashy, but I am convinced that in a carefully chosen library 

 like ours, with its thousands of volumes, good reading greatly preponderates over trash. 

 And then in our standard authors, both ancient and modern, what a world of wit and 



