| J.R. MIller | Page 2 |
Sometimes in the country one sees in and old-fashioned tannery a primitive contrivance for grinding bark. A horse, attached to a pole, goes round and round, running the bark-mill. For hours every day the patient animal treads on, always moving, but never getting away from his little circular path. So it is that many people plod on in their daily routine of life. They do the same things day in and day out, week in and week out. This routine is not idle. It is really necessary that we do the same tasks over and over, with scarcely a variation from year to year.
The women find it so in their home life; their housekeeping duties are about the same every day. It cannot be other wise. To break up the routine would be to mar the completeness of the home life and work. To omit any of the little
duties of the kitchen, the dining room, or the general housework would be to leave the work of the home less beautifully done. Most men in their daily task-work must follow a like imperious routine. They must rise at the same hour, take the same train or trolley car, be at their desk in the office, or at their place in the mill, at the same time, follow the same order, perform the same tasks, go to their meals at the regular times, day after day. To miss a link anywhere in the routine would mar the day’s work.
Some people fret and chafe over the drudgery, as they call it, of their common lives. They weary of its monotonous rounds, its lack of variety, its never-ending repetition. But really there is a benefit, a discipline, is this very unbrokenness of tasks. The old horse that goes round and round in his circular track, turning the creaking, crunching mill, does his duty well, grinding the bark honestly though he never makes any progress himself. No doubt his work through the years adds thousands of dollars to the world’s wealth in the article of leathers. The men and the women who rise in the morning and go through the same monotonous round of tasks every day, six days in the week, are doing their work faithfully and at the same time are forming their own character. That is the way we build our life. It would not be well if we were released from the daily round, though it is so monotonous. We owe much to it. It trains us.
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