dignified, it is always reposeful. Philosophical laziness, we mean. The
kind of laziness that is based upon a carefully reasoned analysis of
experience. Acquired laziness. We have no respect for those who were
born lazy; it is like being born a millionaire: they cannot appreciate
their bliss. It is the man who has hammered his laziness out of the
stubborn material of life for whom we chant praise and allelulia.

The laziest man we know--we do not like to mention his name, as the
brutal world does not yet recognize sloth at its community value--is
one of the greatest poets in this country; one of the keenest satirists;
one of the most rectilinear thinkers. He began life in the customary
hustling way. He was always too busy to enjoy himself. He became
surrounded by eager people who came to him to solve their problems.
"It's a queer thing," he said sadly; "no one ever comes to me asking for
help in solving _my_ problems." Finally the light broke upon him. He
stopped answering letters, buying lunches for casual friends and
visitors from out of town, he stopped lending money to old college pals
and frittering his time away on all the useless minor matters that
pester the good-natured. He sat down in a secluded cafe with his cheek
against a seidel of dark beer and began to caress the universe with his
intellect.

The most damning argument against the Germans is that they were not lazy
enough. In the middle of Europe, a thoroughly disillusioned, indolent
and delightful old continent, the Germans were a dangerous mass of
energy and bumptious push. If the Germans had been as lazy, as
indifferent, and as righteously laissez-fairish as their neighbours, the
world would have been spared a great deal.

People respect laziness. If you once get a reputation for complete,
immovable, and reckless indolence the world will leave you to your own
thoughts, which are generally rather interesting.

Doctor Johnson, who was one of the world's great philosophers, was lazy.
Only yesterday our friend the Caliph showed us an extraordinarily
interesting thing. It was a little leather-bound notebook in which
Boswell jotted down memoranda of his talks with the old doctor. These
notes he afterward worked up into the immortal Biography. And lo and
behold, what was the very first entry in this treasured little relic?

Doctor Johnson told me in going to Ilam from Ashbourne, 22
September, 1777, that the way the plan of his Dictionary came to