WORK AND PLAY IN AMERICA.

Grey River Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 5302, 24 September 1885, Page 4

WORK AND PLAY IN AMERICA.

[home news.] Nothing is more common in these years of grace, and in our bustling land of promise, than instances of ill -health and broken-down constitutions from what is called over-work. Ministers and laymen seem to be alike suffering from this fruitful cause of evil ; and sermons, essays, cieeds, and treatises have been. launched at us as a nation of unwise toilers after the successes of life, which we lose the.capacity to enjoy long before their attainment. Our English brethren (says the Boston Coivrier, U.^i) do this sort of thing better: thnn we, partly because they inherit the.. phlegmatic and conservative temperament of their sires ; but largely also because they breathe a less stimulating air than curs. A Boston physician of eminence, now almost full of years and honors, returned once from Europe, and met, a few days after his arrival, a professional friend in a horse-car. This friend having expressed his pleasure with the traveller's improved appearance, the latter said, "1 ■was in first-class condition when I landed, but I have been so very busy since that I am now rather done up again." "Of course," said his sympathe'ic brother, " you found much of your work behindhand, and many things to set right after your absence." "Not that," replied the doctor, "is the cause of my fatigue, but our confounded habit of hurrying everything. When I was in England I adopted the comfortable English ways, and I determined to continue them after my return to Boston : but no sooner did my foot touch the ground here than I began to hurry: and I've been hurrying ever since ! It's something in the atmosphere which makes hurry our normal condition !" Admitting the atmospheric pressure, however, and making generous allowance for inherited delicacy of constitution in some cases, and the exigencies of particular employments in others, it is probably true that in the majority of instances what is euphemistically called overwork is nothing more nor less than under-play. Trite as the subject undoubtedly is, it is true,' and sad, too, that few men or w^men 1 actively employed take anything like the "ame I pains to procure adequate and wholesome diversion and physical exercise that they give to the acquisition of the o'her necessaries of life. Certain outdoor Rports like tennis, archery, andbicycling are growing in favor yearly ; and horseback exercise has become quite fashionable of late ; but these are out of the reach of many brain-workfirs through want of time or money. The average business man leads a tread-mill kind of existence, making his monotonous rounds between home and office or store ; eating, as a rulf, a quantity of rich food daily such a street labourer could hardly digest, enjoying his coffee and tobacco almost ad libitum, and systematically ignoring regular every r day exercise sufficient to induce perspiracion. Mr Blaikie, in one of his little manuals of exercise, tells us how 20 minutes per diem of regular exercise may be enough to keep the average man or woman in good physical condition. How many of us are there who are as careful to get it as we are to secure thrae good meals a day ? Certain it'is that we should.be obliged to listen to fewer morbid sermons if ministers, as a class, were more athletic ; and it is perhaps, a question whether any man with a perfect digestion ever doubted seriously of his eternal salvation. Much of the care and worry which have killed many men might be banished from life if the pressure of blood were diverted from the brain by healthy physical exercise, and distributed among the other members of the body, and we should then no longer be open to the reproach levelled at us by one of ourselves, the clever author of " Outdoor Papers," of being content with a degree of health just sufficient to keep us out of the hospital.