house once asked me:

"How many do you 'spose there are in the United States that
don't have to work?"

"None," I replied, "except invalids and cripples. Every healthy
man in this country has to work just the same as he has to
breathe. If you don't want to work it is because you're sick. I'm
a well man, and I've got to be working all the time or I'd go
crazy. I have no more desire to be idle like you than I have a
desire to wear women's clothes. It is contrary to normal nature,
and that's why I say that any man that gets that way is a sick
man."

The fellow was a "free thinker," as he called himself. He was
too lazy to shave and his beard was always about two weeks ahead
of him. He was working out a plan for communism in the United
States. He believed that enough work had now been done to supply
the race forever. It was just a question of so evenly dividing
the goods that all men instead of a few could loaf the rest of
their years.

He had such a tired feeling that he didn't have the ambition of
an oyster. He didn't have enough energy to realize he was all in.
He took it for granted that the whole race was as tired as he
was.

He thought he needed one of the Utopias they talk so much
about. What he needed was a dose of castor-oil. I never knew a
communist in my life that was a well man.