About Work

 Some words of wisdom from one of America's

most beloved writers on her birthday...

There is good in everything, we are told, if we will only look for it;

and I have at last found the good in a hard spell of illness.

It is the same good the Irishman found in whipping himself.

"Why in the world are you doing that?"

exclaimed the unexpected and astonished spectator.

"Because it feels so good when I stop," replied the Irishman with a grin.

And this thing of being ill certainly does feel good when it stops.

Why, even work looks good to a person who has been through

such enforced idleness, at least when strength is returning.

Though I'll confess, if work crowds on me too soon,

I am like the friend who was recovering from influenza

rather more slowly than is usually the case.

"I'll eat all right and sleep all right," said he.  "I even feel all right,

but just the sight of a piece of work makes me tremble."

"That," said I, "is a terrible affliction, but I have known persons

who suffer from it who never had influenza."

But I'm sure we will all acknowledge that there is an advantage

in having been ill if it makes us eager for work once more.

Sometimes, I fancy we do not always appreciate the value

of work, and how dry and flavorless life would be without it.

If work were taken from us, we would lose rest also, for how

could we rest unless we first became tired from working?

Leisure would mean nothing to us for it would not be a prize

to be won by effort and so would be valueless. Even play

would lose its attraction for, if we played all time, play

would become tiresome; it would be nothing but work after all.

In that case, we would be at work again and perhaps a piece of

actual work would become play to us. 

 How topsy-turvy!

But there is no cause for alarm.

None of us is liable to be denied the pleasure of working, and that

is good for us no one will deny.  Man realized it soon after he was

sentenced to "earn his bread by the sweat of his brow", and

with his usual generosity he lost no time in letting his

womankind in on a good thing.

"About Work"

(February 1919)

Laura Ingalls Wilder

( 1867-1957)
Prolific American writer 
and pioneer girl

An essay from the book,

Little House In The Ozarks

A Laura Ingalls Wilder Sampler

The Rediscovered Writings

Edited by Stephen W. Hines

Guidepost Edition

(1991)