“I object to both clauses of the bill,” says the courageous dissenter. “Early risers are generally milksop spoonies, ninnies with broad, unmeaning faces and groset eyes, cheeks odiously rosy, and with great calves to their legs.”
One of Primitive Man’s Habits.
This indictment was written in Scotland. Matters may not be quite so disgraceful here. Wilson questioned the motives of his fellow countrymen who sally forth at an impossibly early hour, and suggested that their ambition is merely to get an omnivorous appetite for breakfast.
“Let no knavish prig purse up his mouth and erect his head when he meets an acquaintance who goes to bed and rises at a gentlemanly hour.”
The lower orders of creation go to bed and rise with the sun. Primitive man probably had this vicious habit. Civilization has gradually reduced the ranks of early risers to the healthy and vigorous persons who purvey ice and milk with much clatter when they ought to be abed. The length of human life is increasing, and this is due to late rising. There can be no doubt about it. The sun rises hereabouts at this season [July] at 4:30 A.M., and few there be who have the nerve to witness the phenomenon.
MANUAL LABOR IS MAKING NEW CONVERTS.
Men Who Have Won Their Way With Their Brains Now Give Their Hands a Chance.
Men of standing are more willing to work with their hands than they used to be. The new love for outdoor life may be in part responsible; as also the growing interest in art-craft, and a steady reaction against the “machine-made.” In any event manual work has been acquiring new dignity.
The Saint Paul Dispatch says that until within a few years we were so bent on emphasizing the intellectual that the manual had no honor.
To a certain appreciable extent this is changing. Men are interested to-day in seeing how much they can do for themselves. It is not alone that the art-craft movement has been inaugurated. We speak of a very much more intimate and amateurish thing than that.