CHESTERFIELD asks somewhere, of some one, “Will you improve that hour instead of idling it away?" That depends. For myself, I hold it most righteous to idle away many an hour, for, paradoxical as it may seem, with folded arms and half-closed eyes we may wax wiser with every hour. An “idle hour" is a contradiction. The world does not pause because your step becomes a shuffle; and where, out of doors, is it empty? Custom is a cruel taskmaster; but when his back is turned it is well to watch a chance and give ourselves over to receptive idleness. It is the enjoyment of such moments in anticipation that makes labor tolerable. One day in seven is every man's by law, and so he values it at far less than its real worth. A stolen week-day hour, for which one plans and struggles, is a tidbit more clearly remembered than a month of Sundays. I never met him yet who had no love for a holiday. Toil is necessary, but it does not charm; labor per se is not man's chiefest aim, but to complete a life-work as soon as possible, that the inactive contemplation of it may be indulged. So universal is a love of such idleness that, it is safe to assume, idleness is the aim of life. Every one disputes this, but it matters not. We all know it as a feeling hidden in every breast; else why every one wishes he was so far rich that he need not labor? Not necessarily to sit with folded hands and dream; but to be able to follow the whim of the moment, — to do as he pleases, — to indulge in idleness. This, unhappily, is the lot of few, but the many are not so sorely stricken as they imagine, and hours of happy idleness are lost through ignorance.

A truce to sermonizing: let us to serious consideration. To be idle is not to be passive and semi-unconscious. Who really does the greater work, he who moves a mountain by the shovelful, or he who fathoms the mystery of how it came to be? Nor is this but referring to the difference between manual and mental labor. The latter may be far more onerous. The idleness I advocate is that which allows the world to be our teacher. As I write these words the river is flowing by, bearing many a storm- riven branch and uprooted tree towards the ocean. Do you suppose that to idly drift with these, careless of where the journey ended, would not be to your gain? Is it possible that the river would withhold all it knows because you forcibly wrested nothing from it? Let us idle away this summery September day, and count our gains in the moonlight. Who ever encountered the chaotic side of Nature? Turn your back on the workshop and stroll along a country highway. Here, perhaps, you will come nearest to wasting your time; but such a disaster can be avoided. Why a highway is so commonplace is a problem to solve while lying in the shade. There is seldom ground so barren but a weed will find roothold, and a weed is not beyond the pale of a botanist's consideration. No fence was ever so intensely ugly that a spider shunned it; and what a marvel is a spider's web! Earthworms will break the monotony of a smoothly-trodden path during the night, and what their earth-casts mean, as they lie over the bare ground, set Darwin to thinking. What nonsense it is to decry an aimless stroll, a journey without a goal! As if all life's excellence was to be purchased only by sweat-drops. It is a happy thought, that of idling away odd bits of time, only do so without thought of possibly better things. When I stop to eat a frost-nipped persimmon, a plague on the intruding thought that finer fruits grow in the tropics. To walk from Littleworth to Smalltown may be merely the taking of so many steps; but, if you reach there one fact the wiser, you have taken the first step in profitable idling.

To idle away an hour, a day, or a week, let your mind drift. Do not hold back, whatever beckons. Be it the humblest weed, a dusty worm, or even an English sparrow, let it be your leader, if it will, and you will not be the worse for the company you have kept. It is not a question of studying any of these despised common things, but the reception of such ideas as they may offer. Not one, mind you, but has a part to play in the great world drama, and, the chances are, can give you a hint that will not need to be kept seven years before it proves useful. This is what I mean by idling, and hold it worthy of a vigorous defence.

Never reach beyond arm's length, for that is labor and not idleness, or chase a white blackbird from dawn till dark, forgetting that color is but feather-deep, and that the mystery of a bird, and not a chance happening, is the fact worth knowing. Do not count yourself a lord of creation, either, when you enter the field, for you are not, and the assumption makes you merely an intruder. Knock at the door, and ask to come in, and you will be accorded a hearty welcome. Thus it is, by humbling yourself, you shall be exalted.

It is September, and the summer yet lingers. Let us idly saunter beyond the town, gathering the best fruit that offers, but not passing by unheeded that which is blighted. Here is matter for leisurely contemplation: what caused the untimely destruction? What is blight? Some creature having equal claim to fruit has been ahead of you merely, and you, man, lord of creation, get angry because beaten by a bug! As a spectator, and not a victim, I am amused, and, lolling in the September .sunshine, have learned something without an effort. After all, fruit does not grow that you may be filled. The fruit is but your prey, and the insect has as good cause to hate you as have you to be enraged when it gets the upper hand. Might makes right, in spite of the preacher; and I do not blame a wasp for stinging me when I disturb him at his feast. His is the rosy cheek of the apple, mine the yellow; and why not keep within bounds? Here is not an idle thought, but one bred in idleness; it is only the victim of his own unreasonableness that is deaf to reason. We are beyond the orchard, and a new field, and ever an attractive one, lies before us. What can be better than the wilds of an unkempt meadow? Have but one care as you cross the threshold: avoid haste. Not a step can be taken that does not pass by more than a lifetime can wholly comprehend. Remember, it is September, and summer's day is over before the month goes by. Long ago as June we found the firstlings of every flock full of interest, but what of the lastlings? Nature is never an old story. We think the glory of June has faded before the close of summer, but Nature paints with fast colors, and the dust is in our own eyes. When the orchard bends with an over-crop, as now, who stops to admire the flushed cheeks of a single apple? But in years of scarcity, the single beauties are perched upon mantelpieces as too valuable for the dumpling, where they really show to best advantage.

I have this day witnessed the first scene of the last act of summer; and if the bank whereon the wild thyme blows could hold the gaze of Shakespeare, how he would have lingered over a way-side pond this morning, flecked with white water-lilies and hemmed by the tall scarlet spires of lobelia! Never shone the sun more brightly; earth and air were flooded with its penetrating rays. Nothing was hidden, not even a blade of grass but stood bravely forth, as if conscious of its beauty. It is a crystalline day, when we have insight in a literal sense, and not merely the dim outlines of the external world; a day when Nature draws the veil and you are brought face to face with beauty. A pool becomes now something more than a hollow in the ground, decked with lilies and lobelia; but if it were not more than this, there would still be reason for lingering here, — for idling away an hour. Can flowers bloom without whispering to the world facts worth knowing? It is no fault of theirs if their bright sayings fall forever on deaf ears. Mankind loves color. His eye craves it as his stomach craves food. We carry it into our houses, dreading the depressing effect of cold gray walls, but how sadly we use it! If an hour's idleness brings us nearer to Nature in such a matter as house-decoration, we have done our duty to the world as well as to ourselves. Why flowers, that Nature stamps as monstrosities, should replace the gems of her handiwork on the walls of our houses is not readily explained. Here at the pool is scarlet and white, and every imaginable shade of purple, green, and brown, even polished and old gold; a dozen blooming plants in the scope of a single glance, and every one a masterpiece of grace as well as color; but where upon wallpaper will we find them? Such a scene as this way-side pool haunts us. It is carried as a flitting ghost of landscape to the workshop, and even so makes labor less onerous, and we are well rewarded for that idling at which the unthinking rail. Commune with a cloud or chat with a wayside weed and you have done better, hour for hour, than laboring under protest. At the end of your term, in the latter case, you have gold as your recompense; but who, after an hour's wandering afield, happily chancing upon Nature's flower-garden, and strolling through its by-paths, loitering by its lilies, sauntering in its scented sunshine, can return to the work-a-day world empty-handed? What of that wider vision of the universe, that assurance of right royal living which is ever at hand? A finer metal than gold is needed for its purchase. Some joys that we have tasted will return whenever called. Nature's torch grows faster at the base than ever the top turns to ashes. There is a new light for the idler every hour, and a new thought to cheer when the burden is once more to be shouldered. Who dare say that the more we learn of this world the less will we have to learn of the next? I dare think it. The lilies that float in the still water and the flaming lobelia that surrounds them, — all this is no less a part of the world because beyond the town's limits.

There is a homely phrase common to all, — something to think about. This is a wide-spread want, and its value may be measured by its universality. Buried in bricks, the brain will still work, and what wonders has it not wrought when there was no trace of Nature near to cheer it! Books have been written in dungeons, but would this have been possible had the prisoner never wandered in a green field or rambled in a forest?

But speak of out-of-doors and Thoreau comes to mind. He was a surveyor, but how much more an idler in the fields! Was it when he measured the farmers' wood-lots that he nailed to the mast those bright thoughts that have been a help to mankind ever since? What of the days when, to shield himself from the driving storms, he crouched behind the stone wall? He thought himself a philosopher then, as he distinctly states, and he was right. The life that is wholly given to manual labor is a life half lost.

Nature was not limited to the lilies and lobelia to-day. The fields reaching to the far-off woods were bright with golden-rod; there were ivory-white "turtle-heads" clustered in shady nooks, orchids in abundance, purple gerardia, eupatorium, asters of regal mould, and a host of lesser lights that make good the claim that Nature's palette was not used up in painting the June landscape. To be surfeited with flowers is a weakness against which to guard; rather, they should be that joy forever which Keats immortalized. Surely it is a red-letter day when we greet the fringed gentian. Where autumn flowers bloom there, too, will be music. Merit never lacks good company. The singing-bird may have drifted from exultation to meditation; from May to September is a long journey, if we have been awake to the world as it was passing; so, too, with the birds. Their holiday has come, and they have desire to fritter it away. Perhaps they are planning for the year to come; perhaps for their migratorial flight; but no sweetness has been lost. We have it in the books that the birds cease to sing when the summer is over, as if they mourned the separation, the severing of family ties. It is not true. The young follow their parents, and the parents remain mated. Because we cannot see how this can be, how natural to deny it! but every returning spring proves it nevertheless. Autumn bird-songs are meditative, that is all, and no less charming because of this. The woods do not ring now; but there is a gentle murmur, a whispering melody that can soothe the savage breast. If all the world idled in the September sunshine, no one need wonder why. But idle in the proper way. Be receptive; for this is but another name for contemplation, and contemplation is the noblest occupation. The ultra-utilitarian may condemn even such idleness, but it is an error. To rest with half-closed eyes, even for half a day, where Nature is busiest is not to lose time. It is that half-sleep which renews our stock of ideas, as slumber restores the outworn body.