One of the leading characteristics of the present day is its craze for work, unceasing work, work early and late, work done with a rush, destroying nerves, and rendering repose impossible. "Late taking rest and eating the bread of carefulness" do not go together, the bread being as a rule anything but carefully consumed. R. L. Stevenson somewhere says, "So long as you are a bit of a coward, and inflexible in money matters, you fulfil the whole duty of man," and perhaps this is the creed of the present race of over-workers. In the City of London we see this hasting to be rich brought to the perfection of a Fine Art (with a capital F and a capital A).
Charles Dickens, who always resolved the wit of every question into a nutshell, makes Eugene Wrayburn, in "Our Mutual Friend," strenuously object to being always urged forward in the path of energy.
"There's nothing like work," said Mr. Boffin; "look at the bees!"
"I beg your pardon," returned Eugene, with a reluctant smile, "but will you excuse my mentioning that I always protest against being referred to the bees? ... I object on principle, as a two-footed creature, to being constantly referred to insects and four-footed creatures. I object to being required to model my proceedings according to the proceedings of the bee, or the dog, or the spider, or the camel. I fully admit that the camel, for instance, is an excessively temperate person; but he has several stomachs to entertain himself with, and I have only one."...
"But," urged Mr. Boffin, "I said the bee, they work."
"Yes," returned Eugene disparagingly, "they work, but don't you think they overdo it? They work so much more than they need—they make so much more than they can eat—they are so incessantly boring and buzzing at their one idea till Death comes upon them—that don't you think they overdo it?"
Some time since I cut from the pages of the St. James' Gazette the following "Cynical Song of the City," which pleasantly sets forth the present craze for work, and again proves, like Dickens' bee, that we rather overdo it:—
"Through the slush and the rain and the fog,
When a greatcoat is worth a king's ransom,
To the City we jolt and we jog