Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, church or market,is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies acatholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a sort ofdead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of livingexcept in the exercise of some conventional occupation. Bring thesefellows into the country, or set them aboard ship, and you will see howthey pine for their desk or their study. They have no curiosity; theycannot give themselves over to random provocations; they do not takepleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its own sake; and unlessNecessity lays about them with a stick, they will even stand still. It is nogood speaking to such folk： they cannot be idle, their nature is notgenerous enough; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which arenot dedicated to furious moiling in the gold-mill. When they do notrequire to go to the office, when they are not hungry and have no mind todrink, the whole breathing world is a blank to them. If they have to waitan hour or so for a train, they fall into a stupid trance with their eyesopen. To see them, you would suppose there was nothing to look at andno one to speak with; you would imagine they were paralyzed oralienated; and yet very possibly they are hard workers in their own way,and have good eyesight for a flaw in a deed or a turn of the market. Theyhave been to school and college, but all the time they had their eyes onthe medal; they have gone about in the world and mixed with cleverpeople, but all the time they were thinking of their own affairs. As if amans soul were not too small to begin with, they have dwarfed andnarrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play.
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