No one ever found the world quite as he would like it. You will be sure
to have burdens laid upon you that belong to other people, unless you
are a shirk yourself; but don't grumble. If the work needs doing and you
can do it, never mind about the other one who ought to have done it and
didn't; do it yourself. Those workers who fill up the gaps, and smooth
away the rough spots, and finish up the jobs that others leave
undone,--they are the true peacemakers, and worth a regiment of
grumblers.
"Oh, what a sunny, winsome face she has!" said a Christian Endeavorer,
in reporting of a clerk whom he saw in a Bay City store. "The customers
flocked about her like bees about a honey-bush in full bloom."
SINGING AT YOUR WORK.
"Give us, therefore,"--let us cry with Carlyle,--"oh, give us the man
who sings at his work! He will do more in the same time, he will do it
better, he will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible of fatigue
whilst he marches to music. The very stars are said to make harmony as
they revolve in their spheres. Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness,
altogether past calculation its powers of endurance. Efforts, to be
permanently useful, must be uniformly joyous, a spirit all sunshine,
graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright."
"It is a good sign," says another writer, "when girlish voices carol
over the steaming dish-pan or the mending-basket, when the broom moves
rhythmically, and the duster flourishes in time to some brisk melody. We
are sure that the dishes shine more brightly, and that the sweeping and
dusting and mending are more satisfactory because of this running
accompaniment of song. Father smiles when he hears his girl singing
about her work, and mother's tired face brightens at the sound. Brothers
and sisters, without realizing it, perhaps, catch the spirit of the
cheerful worker."
There are singing milkers in Switzerland; a milkmaid or man gets better
wages if gifted with a good voice, for a cow will yield one-fifth more
milk when soothed by a pleasing melody.
It was said by Buffon that even sheep fatten better to the sound of
music. And when field-hands are singing, as you sometimes hear them in
the old country, you may be sure the labor is lightened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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