, 1867-12-06
Rest.

Mulutudes Of earth's toiling millions have
died while striving 10 get enough money Il
retire from business, and in beautiful cot.
tage on their own little farm to spend the
remnant of their days in having nothing
particular to do. Perhaps one in a million
of the hopers does make money enough to
retire to his country seat, aud for year or
two, while he is fixing it up to his notion,
all goes on charmingy, aud when every
thingis completed to his mind and be has
nothing more to take up his attention, he
eats and sleeps and lounges around for few
nosths longer, falls into disease and dies; or,
| if h:2has unusual free of character and pow
er Of observation, he notices that both health
and happiness are passing away from him,
and tracing this to the true cause of an in
active body and an unoccupied mind and
he resolves to 's,l out" and plunge again
into the vortex Of business.
Recently an old school mate-younger,
graduating in the same class tbirty>seven
years ago-writes that both body and mind
are worn out. The slightest physical labor
exhausts him. and even my effort to think
or study, or even read, so wearies the brain
that life is felt as burden He withdrew
from the professional duties, which he had
performed in the place for twenty-five years
with honor to himself having secured
the love and confidence and respect of all
who knew him. He gave up his calling for
the purpose of obtaining rest as means oi
health.
The number of families are rapidly in>
creasing every day, who give up housekeep-
ing as means of rest from family cares, aud
resort to that miserable and most unwise
mode of life, boarding at a hotel or in some
private family, to get more dissatisfied than
ever in few months, meanwhile falling in
to bad health and bad habits of various
kinds.
All these classes of persons fail, mi>era-
bly, fail in their object, because they mistake
the physiological meaning Of the word rest
Neither the Ioly or brain are safely and t u
ly and happily restei by dCing hitting The
only he,lthiul rest, as long as our physical
and mental constitution remains as it is, is
to be busy. Men Of force and industry will
everywhere tell you, 1T is the hardest thing
in the word to do nothing
No mortal man was ever made to be a
lbdiGI, " DG d IlloSl NlOuC. hS lluS
idea of rest is recreation, a making over
again, return to onr accustomed vigor; aud
this is to be accomplished, not by allowing
the machine to come to stand still, for in
activity is rust and ruin to all mechanical
contrl7ances, aud death to all physiological
structures. The true object Of rest is recu-
peration, and that is best brought about as
to the body, by exercising different set Of
muscles; and as to the brain by calling into
requiiton different set of organs or powN
ers causing the mird to act upon new OBJ.
jects. a better plan is not to get into the
unheaIthful conditions named, and they are
avoid.ble by giving two hours daily to the
exercise of different class of muscles or to
the investigation or study Of objects of a
comparatively trivial importance and OF a
wholly different nature. The student should
ride on horseback, or cultivate fruit and
flowers the merchant should employ his
mind in liberal studies, in active, personal
and elevating charities, while the over tlxed
and worried wife should pay visit daily to
some prudent friend, some CHEEKY neighbOr,
or suffering sister or child; The main in al
cases being to spend to or three hours in the
open air activeness, wholly different from the
ordinary business routine.