If I Had Leisure | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · Jul 15, 1875

If I Had Leisure.

"If I had leisure, I would repair that weak place in my fence," said a farmer. He had none, however, and while drinking cider with a neighbor, the cows broke in and injured a prime piece of corn. He had leisure then to repair his fence, but it did not bring back his corn.

"If I had leisure," said a wheelwright last winter, "I would alter my stove-pipe, for I know it is not safe." But he did not find time, and when his shop caught fire and burned down, he found leisure to build another.

"If I had leisure," said a mechanic, "I should have my work done in season." The man thinks his time has been all occupied, but he was not at work till after sunrise; he quit work at five o'clock, smoked a cigar after dinner, and spent two hours on the street talking nonsense with an idler.

"If I had leisure," said a merchant, "I would pay more attention to accounts." The chance is, my friend, if you had leisure, you would probably pay less attention to the matter than you do now. The thing lacking with hundreds of farmers who till the soil is, not more leisure, but more resolution—the spirit to do—to do now. If the farmer who sees the fence in a poor condition would only act at once, how much might be saved. It would prevent breech-y cattle creating quarrels among neighbors, that in many cases terminate in lawsuits, which take nearly all they are both worth to pay the lawyers.—Annual of Phrenology and Physiognomy for 1875.