John Ploughman's Talk

heard men say, “Better do nothing than do mischief,” but I am not even sure of that: that saying glitters well, but I don’t believe it’s gold. I grudge laziness even that pinch of praise, I say it is bad and bad altogether; for look ye, a man doing mischief is a sparrow picking the corn — but a lazy man is a sparrow sitting on a nest full of eggs, which will all turn to sparrows before long, and do a world of hurt. Don’t tell me, I’m sure of it, that the rankest weeds on earth don’t grow in the minds of those who are busy at wickedness, but in foul corners of idle men’s imaginations, where the devil can hide away unseen like an old serpent as he is. I don’t like our boys to be in mischief, but I would sooner see them up to their necks in the mud in their larks, than sauntering about with nothing to do. If the evil of doing nothing seems to be less to-day, you will find it out to be greater to-morrow; the devil is putting coals on the fire, and so the fire does not blaze, but, depend upon it, it will be a bigger fire in the end. Idle people, you had need be your own trumpeters, for no one else can find any good in you to praise. I’d sooner see you through a telescope than anything else, for I suppose you would then be a long way off; but the biggest pair of spectacles in the parish could not see anything in you worth talking about. Moles, and rats, and weasels, there is something to be said for, though there’s a pretty sight of them nailed up on our old barn, but as for you — well, you’ll be of use in the grave, and help to make a fat churchyard, but no better song can I sing in your favor than this verse, as the parish clerk said, “all of my own composing:”

A good-for-nothing lazy lout,
Wicked within and ragged without,
Who can bear to have him about?
Turn him out! Turn him out!

“As vinegar to the teeth, and as smoke to the eyes,” so is the sluggard to every man who is spending his sweat to earn an honest living, while these fellows let the grass grow up to their ankles, and stand cumbering the ground, as the Bible says.

A man who wastes his time and his strength in sloth offers himself to be a target for the devil, who is a wonderfully good rifleman, and will riddle the idler with his shots: in other words, idle men tempt the devil to tempt them. He who plays when he should work, has an evil spirit to be his playmate; and he who neither works nor plays is a workshop for Satan. If the devil catch a man idle, he will set him to work, find him tools, and before long pay him wages. Is not this where the drunkenness comes from which fills our towns and villages with misery? Idleness is the key of beggary, and the root of all evil. Fellows have two stomachs for eating and drinking when they have no stomach for work. That little hole just under the nose swallows up in idle hours that money which should put clothes on the children’s backs, and bread on the cottage table. We have God’s word for it, that “the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty;” and to show the connection between them, it is said in the same verse, “and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.” I know it as well as I know that moss grows on old thatch, that drunken, loose habits grow out of lazy hours. I like leisure when I can get it, but that’s quite another thing; that’s cheese and the other is chalk; idle folks never know what leisure means; they are always in a hurry and a mess, and by neglecting to work in the proper time, they always have a lot to do. Lolling about hour after hour, with nothing to do, is just making holes in the hedge to let the pigs through, and they will come through, and no mistake, and the rooting they will do nobody knows but those who have to look after the garden. The Lord Jesus tells us himself that when men slept the enemy sowed the tares; and that hits the nail on the head, for it is by the door of sluggishness that evil enters the heart more often, it seems to me, than by any other. Our old minister used to say, “A sluggard is fine raw material for’ the devil; he can make anything he likes out of him, from a thief right up to a murderer.” I’m not the only one that condemns the idle, for once when I was going to give our minister a pretty long list of the sins of one of our people that he was asking after, I began with “he’s dreadfully lazy.” “That’s enough,” said the old gentleman; “all sorts of sins are in that one, that’s the sign by which to know a full-fledged sinner.”

My advice to my boys has been, get out of the sluggard’s way, or you may catch his disease, and never get rid of it. I am always afraid of their learning the ways of the idle, and am very watchful to nip anything of the sort in the bud; for you know it is best to kill a lion while it is a cub. Sure enough our children have all our evil nature about them, for you can see it growing of itself like weeds in a garden. Who can bring a clean thing out of the unclean? A wild goose never lays a tame egg. Our boys will be off to the green with the ne’erdo-wells unless we make it greener still at home for them, and train them up to hate the company of the slothful. Never let tjiem go to the “Rose and Crown;” let them learn to earn a crown while they are young, and grow the roses in their father’s garden at home. Bring them up bees and they will not be drones.

There is much talk about bad masters and mistresses nowadays, and I dare say that there is a good deal in it, for there’s bad of all sorts now as there always was; another time, if I am allowed, I will have a say about that matter; but I am sure there is plenty of room for complaint against some among the working people too, especially upon this matter of slothfulness. You know we are obliged to plough with such cattle as we have found for us; but when I am set to work with some men, I’d as soon drive a team of snails, or go out rabbit hunting with a dead ferret. Why, you might sooner get blood out of a gatepost, or juice out of a cork, than work out of some of them; and yet they are always talking about their rights; I wish they would give an eye to their own wrongs, and not lean on the plough-handles. Lazy lie-a-beds are not working men at all, any more than pigs are bullocks, or thistles apple trees. All are not hunters that wear red coats, and all are not working men who call themselves so. I wonder sometimes that some of our employers keep so many cats who catch no mice. I would as soon drop my halfpence down a well as pay some people for pretending to work, who only fidget you and make your flesh crawl to see them all day creeping over a cabbage leaf. Live and let live, say I, but I don’t include sluggards in that license; for they who will not work, neither let them eat.

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