grosses much of her powers; still, she requires some of what man requires more, and she can be neither strong nor content without work.
We see and know that children are in incessant motion, cannot be kept still, are restless, and too often are severely reproached for it. Poor things! they are doing what the great Architect intended, and unwise parents do not know it. At this time of life every muscle is growing, developing, and almost the whole duty of childhood is to eat well (not trashily), and then by motion, exercise, play, to apply this food to the building up of strong and perfect bodies. When this body has got to its full stature, it requires less motion or exercise, but then its business is to apply this motion to work, to steady and productive uses, which is not the duty of childhood. But many persons are born rich, or they choose pursuits which seem to impose no bodily labor. Those who are idle are always unhappy; it must be so, because to every muscle goes a subtle nerve, which says, incessantly, "Why do you not work? Why do you not work? Why do you not work?" It is simply God's way of whispering to us that we are not obedient to his designs. How do we respond to this—by obedience? It has been my lot to know, perhaps, one man or woman of a thousand who did any systematic labor which was not forced upon them. I have never known a lady who, as a matter of principle, did two hours of bodily work daily. I have known one lawyer, preacher or scholar in a hundred only who gave his body a fair chance; and I have known most of them to become poor creatures enough by the time they were fifty, while many were sleeping under green bed-clothes before they were forty. And yet we sometimes reproach the Creator for these untimely deaths.
How do we solace our own unhappinesses? what fatal attempts do we make to alleviate our idleness and unrest? We seek excitements. If we are women, we crave a ball, or we spend ourselves upon dress, or we plunge into flirtation. If we are men, we seek relief in tobacco, or in wine, or in gambling. Here comes in that vast consumption of narcotics and stimulants, all of which deaden the nervous sensibility and make idleness endurable. The English only have produced a class of idle men who find a substitute for work in chasing lions in Africa, in seeking to discover in what mountains of the moon the first puddle of the Nile is to be found, or in baffling about among the icebergs of Greenland to find a pole which does not exist. The wonderful energy and talent wasted upon these things could have been had nowhere except in a country where there was great vigor combined with great leisure; vigor not consumed by tobacco or wine or stock-broking.
It would be quite impossible for any nation to sustain a class of idle men or women without the free use of narcotics and stimulants. It is only by their use that these manage to exist; and the great increase in their use is mainly due to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of some, which enables them to live idle lives.
Just what time should be spent in bodily work, or in exercise to take its place, has never been carefully decided. It has been estimated that, if the whole adult population of any land spent four hours per day in productive labor, the whole would be rich. As it now is, about one-half are supposed to be engaged in productive pursuits, and this portion must produce enough for themselves and the other half. To show that this is not an extravagant statement, let me say that, in the State of New York (1865), in a population of 3,827,818, there was a total of but 459,676 persons engaged as food-producers; and this includes all
