The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 21, November 21, 1840Various
History
The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 21, November 21, 1840
Various
Ireland -- Periodicals
EMPLOYMENT FOR THE UNHAPPY.--The unhappy are indisposed to employment:
all active occupations are wearisome and disgusting in prospect, at a
time when every thing, life itself, is full of weariness and disgust.
Yet the unhappy must be employed, or they will go mad. Comparatively
blessed are they, if they are set in families, where claims and duties
abound, and cannot be escaped. In the pressure of business there is
present safety and ultimate relief. Harder is the lot of those who have
few necessary occupations, enforced by other claims than their own
harmlessness and profitableness. Reading often fails. Now and then it
may beguile; but much oftener the attention is languid, the thoughts
wander, and associations with the subject of grief are awakened. Women
who find that reading will not do, will obtain no relief from sewing.
Sewing is pleasant enough in moderation to those whose minds are at
ease the while; but it is an employment which is trying to the nerves
when long continued, at the best; and nothing can be worse for the
harassed, and for those who want to escape from themselves. Writing is
bad. The pen hangs idly suspended over the paper, or the sad thoughts
that are alive within write themselves down. The safest and best of all
occupations for such sufferers as are fit for it, is intercourse with
young children. An infant might have beguiled Satan and his peers the
day after they were couched on the lake of fire, if the love of children
had chanced to linger amidst the ruins of their angelic nature. Next to
this comes honest, genuine acquaintanceship among the poor; not mere
charity-visiting, grounded on soup-tickets and blankets, but intercourse
of mind, with real mutual interest between the parties. Gardening is
excellent, because it unites bodily exertion with a sufficient engagement
of the faculties, while sweet, compassionate nature is ministering cure
in every sprouting leaf and scented blossom, and beckoning sleep to draw
nigh, and be ready to follow up her benignant work. Walking is good,
not stepping from shop to shop, or from neighbour to neighbour, but
stretching out far into the country, to the freshest fields, and the
highest ridges, and the quietest lanes. However sullen the imagination
may have been among its griefs at home, here it cheers up and smiles.
However listless the limbs may have been when sustaining a too heavy
heart, here they are braced, and the lagging gait becomes buoyant again.
However perverse the memory may have been in presenting all that was
agonizing, and insisting only on what cannot be retrieved, here it is
first disregarded, and then it sleeps; and the sleep of the memory is
the day in Paradise to the unhappy. The mere breathing of the cool wind
on the face in the commonest highway is rest and comfort which must be
felt at such times to be believed. It is disbelieved in the shortest
intervals between the seasons of enjoyment; and every time the sufferer
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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