Dr. Mitchell says: "The man who lives an out-door life—who sleeps with the stars visible above him, who wins his bodily subsistence at first-hand from the earth and waters—is a being who defies rain and sun, has a strange sense of elastic strength, may drink if he likes, and may smoke all day long, and feel none the worse for it. Some such return to the earth for the means of life is what gives vigor and developing power to the colonists of an older race cast on a land like ours. A few generations of men living in such fashion store up a capital of vitality which accounts largely for the prodigal activity displayed by their descendants, and made possible only by the sturdy contest with nature which their ancestors have waged. That such a life is still led by multitudes of our countrymen is what alone serves to keep up our pristine force and energy."
Now, while this extreme hardiness and tone cannot be had by a person who has twelve hours of busy brain-work daily in-doors, and only one of bodily exercise, still, much can be done, quite enough to calm and tranquillize, and to carry easily over those passes which used to be dreaded.
If the man who habitually works too long without a rest would every hour or so turn lightly from his work, for even sixty seconds, to some vigorous exercise right in his office, or even in the next room or hall-way, until the blood got out of his brain a little, and the muscles tingled with a hearty glow, he would go back so refreshed as to quickly make up, both in the quantity and quality of his work, for the time lost. When his hour for exercise came, instead of having no heart for it, he would spring to it with alacrity, like the school-boy does to his play.
Even if the strong man does occasionally become jaded, he knows, as Hughes did, how to get back his strength and snap, and that a tired man is many removes from a tired-out one. There is a great deal in knowing whether your work is overdoing you or simply tiring you. One of the strongest and best oarsmen Harvard ever had, used, at first, to think he ought to stop rowing when he began to perspire, and was quite astounded when an older man told him that that was only the beginning of the real work. There is no end of comfort to a tired man, either mentally or physically, in the thought that sure relief is near.
Again, this relief by physical exercise will encourage the man to hope that, if war or accident do not cut him down, he may look for a long life, no matter how great may be the occasional strain. Few men, for instance, familiar with the life of the Duke of Wellington will claim that they are better workers than he was, or that they get through more in a day or year, or that, heavy as their responsibilities may be, they surpass or even equal those which were his for years together. Yet all the terrible mental strain this illustrious man underwent, battling with one of the greatest captains this world ever saw, all the exposure and forced marching, privation and toil, which come to the faithful soldier, and to him who holds the lives of multitudes in his hands, this man knew, and yet so controlled his work, exacting as it all was, as to manage to keep his body superior to all it was called on to do, and his mind in constant working order, and this not merely up to threescore and ten, but to fourscore good years, and three more besides. Did not the vigorous body at the start, and the daily attention to it, pay him?
Will it be claimed that the president of one of the best-known corporations on this continent did any more work than Wellington? That president was at it all day, and far into the night, and when away in Europe, nominally on a play-spell, as well. Naturally, he was a strong, energetic man; but he had so worked, and so neglected his body, that he died at fifty-two. Which of the two men showed the better sense?
What does cutting one's self down at fifty-two mean? Five minutes' reflection should tell any reasonable person that the man was overworking himself, and going at a pace no man could hold and live. Does not this show a lack of sense, and especially when much of that work could certainly have been done by subordinates? Was not one of Daniel Webster's best points his skill in getting work done by others, and saving for himself the parts he liked best?
When, after long years of toil and perseverance, one has worked himself up to position and wide influence, is it sensible to do what his humblest employé could rightly tell him is overcrowding, and so forcing the pace that he certainly cannot hold it? Instead of taking that position and that influence and wielding them for greater ends, and improving them very markedly, must there not be a keen pang to their owner when, tantalized with what seems surely within his grasp, that grasp itself weakens, and the machine goes all to pieces?
These later years are especially the precious ones to the wealthy man. They are his best days. Then his savings, and his earnings too, accumulate as they did not when he was younger. Look at the work done by Vanderbilt, for example, accomplished almost thirty years after he was fifty-two! Did not the active out-door life on the little periauger of his youth, and the daily constitutionals which, notwithstanding his infirmities, all New Yorkers saw him taking in later life, pay him? And are they less precious in any other line of life?
Look for a moment at the value health is to a man in any of the learned professions—of having a sound and vigorous body, with each branch of his vital system working regularly, naturally, and in harmony with the rest. Do these things make no difference to the divine? Had the sturdy, prize-fighter make of Martin Luther nothing to do with his contempt for the dangers awaiting his appearance before Charles V. and his Diet of Worms, and which caused him to say he would go there though the devils were as thick as the tiles on the houses; and with the grand stand he made for the religious light which now shines so freely upon the whole Christian world?