The Young Man and the World

by Albert J. Beveridge

"Turn yourself out to pasture," said a wise old country doctor to an exhausted city man. Certainly, that's the thing to do—"turn yourself out to pasture."

Singular advice for young men, you will say, this counseling of restraint, calmness, and the husbanding of his powers. Yes; but I would prevent you from exhausting yourself. No nervous prostration at forty; no arrested development at fifty; no mental vacuity at fifty-five. Too many Americans cease to count after middle life. They have wasted their ammunition and are sent to the rear—there is no longer use for them on the firing-line. Youth is so strong that it wastes power like a millionaire of vitality. But you will need all this dissipated energy later on—every ounce of it.

And so, while I would have you labor to the last limit of your strength while you are about your work, I would also have you regain the strength thus consumed. I would have you let Nature fill up your empty batteries. Hence the suggestion of vacations, a level mind, and books of serenity.

While you do work, pour your full strength into every blow; but having done your best do not spoil it by lying awake over it. No half-heartedness in your task, however. If you try to save yourself while you are about your business—if you "try to do things easy"—you will neither work well nor rest well nor do anything else well.

I know there are those who cannot, for long, quit work—those who "have their noses to the grindstone," to borrow one of those picture-sentences of the people. In the far off end to which evolution tends, civilization will doubtless reach the point where every human being may have his solid month of play, repose, and recuperation—though this cannot be, of course, while nation competes with nation. A universal industrial agreement alone can compass that happy end. And do we not here perceive, afar off, one of the vast and glorious tasks for the statesmen of the future?

Meanwhile, if every man may not have an entire season of holiday, he may have every day his hour of fun and rest. For every man that, at least, is possible. And, too, he whom necessity drives hardest owns—absolutely owns—for himself one day in seven. Not so bad after all, is it? Not the ideal condition, but still quite tolerable. Fifty-two days in three hundred and sixty-five, nearly two months in the year, already given every man by the usage of our Christian civilization for the purpose of "rest from all his work"; and with divine example encouraging and instructing him in its use.

A man can get along on these two months distributed at the intervals of one in every seven days. He can get along, that is, if he really rests—really gives himself up to the sane joy of normal repose. The humblest toiler, even in our greatest cities, can find physical renewal and soul's upliftment in forest, at river's side, or on the shore of lake or ocean—thanks to rapid transit and cheap fares.

So let us not get to pitying ourselves—we are pretty well circumstanced for the alternation of work and play, even in our state of partial development. It is for us to use the opportunity already afforded us; and, speaking by and large, ought we not to deserve more by using, without waste or worse than waste, what we already have? Is there not sound philosophy in the legend which Mr. Lewis tells us was inscribed on the headboard of Jack King, deceased: "Life ain't in holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well"?

My suggestion of one or two months' outing in addition to our fifty-two Sundays and several holidays is to those who have poured out in brain-work and nervous strain more than the system can possibly replenish except by a period devoted exclusively to the manufacture of force to replace that which has been unnaturally expended. There are men who toil night and day. Mostly they are young men establishing their business or getting their "start."

I know many young men who work twelve and even fourteen hours every day, and keep it up the year round. One of the greatest merchants of my acquaintance worked from five o'clock in the morning until twelve and one o'clock at night, and then slept in his little store. He was just building up his business. We all know men who literally will not stop work while awake, and when their task is near them. Such men must go away from their business and let Nature work on them awhile.