Characters. If they happen to like what they are doing, or happen to
feel in the mood of doing it, they will do it well; otherwise, they
do not care how badly their work is performed, if it only can be got
through with. They have not waked to the consciousness that we have no
right to do anything badly, because whenever we do so we impair our own
faculties, and thereby diminish our powers of usefulness; while, if the
act concerns any one beside ourselves,--as almost all acts do,--we are
wronging our neighbor.

Many persons are so fortunate, women especially almost always so, as to
have enough employment placed before them by the circumstances of their
position, without any effort of choice on their part, to occupy their
time, and to train their faculties. Those who are not thus set to work
by circumstance should be governed in the selection of their employment
by their own inclination and talents. What we love to do we can learn
to do well, and our work will then be agreeable to us. Many persons
are governed in the choice of employment for themselves or for their
children by a stronger consideration for what is honorable in the eyes
of the world than by talent or taste. Thence it often results that
persons fail ever to fulfil the duties they have chosen in a way to
be satisfactory to any one beside themselves, perhaps not even to
themselves. If they have sufficient force of Character to do well in
spite of not doing what they like, they are still never so happy as
they would have been had inclination been consulted. Where the heart
is really in the employment, work is not a burden, but a natural and
pleasant exercise of the powers; and it becomes comparatively easy to
serve the Lord with all the strength.

Those who are not constrained to work, should remember that a life of
idleness cannot be a life of innocence; for the idle cannot serve the