"most silver flow
     Of subtle-paced counsel in distress."

And, according to her word, so did we.  That lazy, idle brook became
to us one of the best of friends; the pathfinder of happiness on
many a bright summer day; and, through long vacations, the faithful
encourager of indolence.

Indolence in the proper sense of the word, you understand.  The
meaning which is commonly given to it, as Archbishop Trench pointed
out in his suggestive book about WORDS AND THEIR USES, is altogether
false.  To speak of indolence as if it were a vice is just a great
big verbal slander.

Indolence is a virtue.  It comes from two Latin words, which mean
freedom from anxiety or grief.  And that is a wholesome state of
mind.  There are times and seasons when it is even a pious and
blessed state of mind.  Not to be in a hurry; not to be ambitious or
jealous or resentful; not to feel envious of anybody; not to fret
about to-day nor worry about to-morrow,--that is the way we ought
all to feel at some time in our lives; and that is the kind of
indolence in which our brook faithfully encouraged us.

'T is an age in which such encouragement is greatly needed.  We have
fallen so much into the habit of being always busy that we know not
how nor when to break it off with firmness.  Our business tags after
us into the midst of our pleasures, and we are ill at ease beyond
reach of the telegraph and the daily newspaper.  We agitate
ourselves amazingly about a multitude of affairs,--the politics of
Europe, the state of the weather all around the globe, the marriages
and festivities of very rich people, and the latest novelties in
crime, none of which are of vital interest to us.  The more earnest
souls among us are cultivating a vicious tendency to Summer Schools,
and Seaside Institutes of Philosophy, and Mountaintop Seminaries of
Modern Languages.

We toil assiduously to cram something more into those scrap-bags of
knowledge which we fondly call our minds.  Seldom do we rest
tranquil long enough to find out whether there is anything in them
already that is of real value,--any native feeling, any original
thought, which would like to come out and sun itself for a while in
quiet.