m fully. A country holiday for me had
always meant incessant occupation of one kind or another, fishing,
climbing, boating, long cycling excursions, and an industrious
endeavour to explore all scenes of interest within a reasonable
compass. Now that I had come to live in the country, I felt more than
ever the need of incessant occupation, for I fully realised that the
worst enemy of human happiness is ennui.

During the first three months, while I was busy in getting settled,
there was no danger of ennui. I was constantly interested, and I was
constantly at work. I learned how to do carpentering and joiner's jobs
with a fair proficiency; I dug nearly an acre of land at the back of my
house with my own spade; made paths, and planted fruit trees; all the
turf for my lawn I laid myself, with a few hours' assistance from a
farm-hand; and there was no night when I did not go to bed with aching
muscles and often with bruised hands. If my bill for labour was
absurdly moderate, it was partly because I did so much myself.

For instance, I employed no one to hang papers or to whitewash ceilings
or paint woodwork. With the willing help of my wife and my boys this
was done with complete satisfaction. One result of these labours was
the pride and love for our little homestead which they created. In
modern civilised life we get too many things done for us, and this is
not merely an economical but an ethical mistake. It is difficult to
feel any real pride in a home which is the creation of other people.
In a true state of civilisation no man will pay another to do what he
can do himself. Not only does he preserve his independence by such a
rule, but he creates a hundred new objects of interest for himself.
The paper which I had hung with my own labour gave me a pleasure which
a much finer paper hung by paid labour could not have given me. The
lawn which I had laid with my own hands seemed more intimately mine
than if I had paid some one else to make it. The more I reflect upon
the matter the more am I convinced that one of the great curses of
civilisation is the division of labour which makes us dependent upon
other people to a degree which destroys individual efficiency. Thrown
back upon himself as a dweller in a wilderness, any man of ordinary
capacity soon develops efficiency for kinds of work which he would
never have attempted in a city, simply because a city tempts him at
every point to delegate his own proper toil