Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1864-10-13


when the very phrase, diseases OF over-worked
men, would have been considered foolish and
out of the question. Now it conveys a truth
OF national Importance, which the nation
must consider. From being a comparatively
idle world we have of late become an insane
world on the subject of labor. So long as
the muscles merely were employed, so long
little harm was done we remained men; now
we aspire TO be gods, and we pay the forfeit
OF Our ambition. From over-work we now
get class of diseases the most prolonged.
the most fatal. The suns of our best men go
down at noon, and so accustomed are we to
the phenomenon that we cease to regard 1t a.
either strange OR out of place. 1t is through
the mind, now, that the body is destroyed by
oyer-work; at all events, it is so mainly
The men of intense thought-men of letters,
men of business who think and speculate
men OF the state who are ambitious to rule,
these men are sacrifices. With them the
brain has not merely to act on its own mus
Giles, bidding them perform their necessary
duties, but the one brain must needs guide
hundred other brains, and all the muscles
thereto appended. An electric battery works
a single wire from the city to Brighton, and
does its work well, and goes on for some
months before it is dead or worn out Can
Oh, yes, it can, but it must have more
acid, must wear faster, and will ulti-
mately die sooner. We may protect the
plates, make the battery to an extent selfre-
generatIye, as the body is, but in the main
the waste Is in excess of the supply, and the
wear is certain as the day. Men of letters,
men of business wLo do their business through
other hands, and do great business, and men
immersed IN politics, suffer much the same
kind of effects from over-work. They induce
in themselves, usually, when they suffer from
this cause, one or other of the following NAL
aides: Cardiac melancholy, or broken
heart, dyspepsia, accompanied with great
loss of phosphorus from the body; diabetes,
consumption, paralysis, local and general
apoplexy, insanity, premature old age. They
also suffer more than other men from the eff
tects of ordinary disorders. They bear pain
lnditferently, can tolerate no lowering meas
ures, are lett long Frustrated by simple de-
pressing maladies, and acquire in some in.
stances a morbid sensibility which is reflect.
ed in every direction; so that briskness of
action becomes irritability; and quiet seclu-
sion moroseness They dislike themselves
and feel that they must be disliked, and if
they attempt to be Joyous they lapse into
shame at having dissembleo, and fall again
| into gloom.-Dr. Richardson, IN Social Review
SHAKESPEARE ALWAYS VIRTUOUs.-Coleridge
says rightly there is not one really vicious
passage in all Shakespeare. There are coarse
| things, for the customs and language of the
| time were coarse. But there is nothing rot
ten at the root, nothing insidious in the sug-
gestion. Vice never walks abroad in the
mental twilight wearing the garb of virtue.
You hear the voices of Wrong and Right,
Truth and Error in his works, but there is no
confusion of tongues for the confounding of
the sense. He has no softness for sentiment
tai sinners; such as Goethe shows for his
Faust" and lets down no drawbridge at the
last moment to help them over the dark gulf
His lines are drawn as sharply as is the scrip,
tural degree that the tree shall lie as it falls
He has infinite pity for the suffering and
struggling and wounded by the way. The
| most powerful and pathetic pleadings on be-
hall of Christian charity that are to be found
anywhere out of the New Testament have
been spoken by Shakespeare. He takes to
his large, warm heart much that the world
usually casts out to perish in the cold. There
is nothing too poor or too mean to be en-
braced within the circle of his sympathies-
He sees the germ of good in that which looks
all evil to the careless passers by, for his eyes
are large with love and have its "precious
seeing" Ii there be only the least little re-
deeming touch in the most abandoned char
acter he is sure to point it out. After all, it
is the best hearts that are the truest mirrors
even Of this world, for it is Gods world, bad
as we have managed to make it.-Londor,
Quarterly Re,tew.