News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1884-05-29
TERMS $3.50.
THE HOT AXLE,
a Lesson I'm Real Life that May be Read to
Advantage.

The express-train was flying from
Cork to Queenstown; it was going like
slxty-that is, about sixty miles an hour.
No sight of Irish village to arrest our
speed, no sign of breakdown; and yet
the train halted. We looked out of the
window; saw the brakeman and crowd
OF passengers gathering around the loco.
motive, and dense smoke arising
What was the matter +? A hot arle!
thought then, as I think now, that is
what is the matter with people every
where. Inthisswift, express, American
life, we go too fast for our endurance. We
think ourselves getting on splendidly,
when, in the midst of our successes, we
CONE to dead halt. What is the mat.
dot Il Tie -4-.....1 -. = ll-ascles or bri ;r.s
give out /; we have made too many 7eyo-
lutions in an hour. 4 hot asle!
Men make the mistake of working
according to their capacity of endurance.
"Can run this train from Springfield
to Boston at the rate of fifty miles an
hour?" says an engineer. Yes. ''Then
I will run it, reckless of consequences r.
Can be a merchant, and president of
bank, and director in life-insurance
company, and school-commissioner,
and help edit paper, and supervise the
politics of our ward, and run for Con-
gress? 81 can u the man says to HIM
self. The store drives him; the bank
drives him; the school drives him; poll
tics drive him. He takes all the scold-
ings and frets and exasperations of each
position. Some day, at the height of
the business season, he does not come to
the store. From the most important
meeting of the bank directors he is alb
sent In the excitement of the most in-
portant political canvass he fails to be
at the place appointed. What is the
matter His health has broken down;
the train halts long before it gets to the
station. 4 hot arle!
Literary men have great opportunities
opening in this day. If they take all
that open, they are dead men, or worse
-liUi1ag men who ought to be dead. The
pen runs so easy when you have good
ink and smooth paper, and an easy desk
to write on, and the consciousness of an
audience of one, two, or three hundred
thousand readers. There arethe reii- |
gious newspapers through which you
may preach, and the musical journals |
through which you may sing, and the
agricultural periodicals through which
you can plow, and family newspapers
which you may romp with the
whole household around the evening
stand. There are critiques to be written,
and reviews to be indulged in, and |
poems to be chimed, and novels to be
When out of mans pen
he con .hplse reeree.tion and friendshil,
and usefulness and bread, he is apt to
keep it shaking. So great are the invi-
tations to literary work, that the profess
sional men of the day are overdone
They sit, faint and tagged out, on the
verge of newspapers and books; each
one does the work of three. And these
men sit up late nights, and choke down
chunks of meat without mastication, and |
scold their wives through irritability, and |
maui innocent authors, and run the |
physical machinery with liver miser-
ably given out. The driving-shaft has
gone fifty times-a second. They stop at
no station. The brain and the digestion
begin to smoke. Stop, ye flying quilts
"Down brake p Il hot arle!
Some of our young people have read
till they are crazed-of learned black
smiths, who at the forge conquered
thirty languages; and of shoemakers,
who, pounding sole-leather, got to be
philosophers; and of milliners, who,
while their customers were at the glass
trying on their spring hats, wrote
volume of frst-rate poems. The fact is,
no blacksmith ought to be troubled
with more than five languages; and in
stead of shoemakers becoming philoso-
pliers, we would like to turn our sur
plus of philosophers into shoemakers;
and the supply of poetry is SO much
greater than the demand, that we wish
milliners would stick to their business.
examples of.work and en-
durance may do as much good. Because
Napoleon slept only four hours night,
hundreds of students have tried the ex-
pertinent; but instead of Austerlitz and
Saragossa, there came of it only sick
headache and botch of recitation. =
T. DE WITT TALMAGE, in Home Science
for May.