A quotation from a recent daily paper reads, "'Rest while you work,'
says Annie Payson Call,"--and then the editor adds, "and get fired,"
and although the opportunity for the joke was probably thought too
good to lose, it was a natural misinterpretation of a very practical
truth.
I can easily imagine a woman--especially a tired out and bitter
woman--reading directions telling how to work restfully and
exclaiming with all the vehemence of her bitterness: "That is all
very well to write about. It sounds well, but let any one take hold
of my work and try to do it restfully.
"If my employer should come along and see me working in a lazy way
like that, he would very soon discharge me. No, no. I am tired out;
I must keep at it as long as I can, and when I cannot keep at it any
longer, I will die--and there is the end."
"It is nothing but drudge, drudge for your bread and butter--and
what does your bread and butter amount to when you get it?"
There are thousands of women working to-day with bodies and minds so
steeped in their fatigue that they cannot or will not take an idea
outside of their rut of work. The rut has grown so deep, and they
have sunken in so far that they cannot look over the edge.
It is true that it is easier to do good hard work in the lines to
which one has been accustomed than to do easy work which is strange.
Nerves will go on in old accustomed habits--even habits of tiresome
strain--more easily than they will be changed into new habits of
working without strain.
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