AMERICAN DISTASTE FOR LEISURE.

Timaru Herald, Volume LV, Issue 5603, 30 December 1892, Page 3

AMERICAN DISTASTE FOR LEISURE.

9 (Spectator.) Iv America the interests o£ men ouUicle > their work are not usually absorbing. The i rich hwo uo estates to gororn, or to fancy ■ they wo g</vorpjng ; they cannot found s families ; nnd they <Jp not often oare to be f aotively pbjlaDt/hropio ; indeed, it they were, ) IK"'.' lflinyto would be an liijiitrd ?o bpCorp.

Business men usually fail to acquire the babi of studying epeoiul subjects, and we tbink'Wi note — though bere we are open to oorrootioi from greater experts — that while averog Americans read more than average English men, they much more seldom enjoy reading or take to books as at once an amusement xn< a satisfying occupation. A few read om nivorously, as a few do m France, but wi imagine the man who is ulwuys sure to bi content if there are books aooessible, is ii Amerioa a rarity. And thirdly, then is the chain of babit. The Americar is a business man from a boy ; hi has never known what it ie to bo free fron business, unless he is travelling — and travel' ling arrests, without altering, strong habits— and be feeh, if he ia out of bueineis, uneasy dispirited, and at angles with bis life He ii like a dram-drinker with no whisky, or— foi the eimile ie a better one — like a smoker whe hns been forbidden tobaooo on account of thi state of his throat, that ie, he is without -it indulgence wbioh has become constitutional wbioh ia an occupation as well us a pleasure: and which produces no moral qualms, lit goes on with busineaa, be it what it may, ai an old hunter goea after the hounds, because somehow he must, even if bis muicleß are failing till he can hardly keep his place, and pants with every exertion as if m pain, Men dread the insipidity of life, even is old age, as they dread nothing else, and to the man who bos onoe grown to regard hit work as the end of his existence, life without it is too insipid to be voluntarily endured If be is iil, he ceases to care ; but to be well, and not be able, as the soap-boiler said, to bo present on melting days, is. intolerably vexatious, or rather, he fears it will be. We place the more con&denoe m thn last explanation, because we have n-- ted far aome years past a distinot iccroaso among (Englishmen of the American feeling. Professional men and buainess men aro rcore reluctant to give up than they were. This is due, no doubt, m part to the increased difficulty of saving, owing to the reduction m tho rato of interest which baa marked tbo luet half of tho Century, and which has so greatly decreased the mental comfort of the middle class, but it is m part, due also to another cause, 'lho babit of working h»s bitten deeper. Work itself has become more interesting with the greater complexity of life with increasod oompßtition, and with the keener sense of what work means; it haß become more necessary, and it has filled a larger space m all the incidents of life. The old leisurely ways bave died out, tho old waetings of time, and, m a great number of men, utually tbe successful men, tbe old addiction to bobbies wholly disconnected with the work of the day. Tbe work, no matter wbat it is, baa filled the mind more, and the hahit of doing it, from a mere clothing, has become a skio, which it seems impossible to tear off without aotual suffering. The reluctance to " go " has become morbid —that is, like a habit indulged for a generation, has nearly paißod beyond tbe control of the will. Men, as any great physician will tell you, constantly die of " retiring," and of no other disease. That Nessus ahirt of habit bites savagely even hero, and if we strengthen its poison, as m America, by exposing it to tho action at once of opinion, of a specialised ambition, and of an hereditary proclivity, we shall reejgniiß Ijow alarming tbe very idea of tearing it from the flesh must perforce become. It i« almost from an instinct of self-defence, liko that which clossa the eyelid to the glare of light, that an Americnu shrinks from abandoning bu.-ineeo, and gats on till he dies adding to millions which give him practically nothing, and whioh, if the influence of habit ceased, he would give away or throw away, mare recklessly tban any man m tho world. He doe! it, even now, very often when he makes a " donation," or portions a daughter, or elves an Aladdin entertainment; but then each of those operations, though unproductive, strikes him as business, too. To him it ie only leisure which ia not business, and, therefore, a harassing waste of valuable tim 3.