Daily Kennebec journal., 1884-05-03

The express train was flying from Cork
to Queenstown; it was going like sixty
that Is, about sixty miles an hour. No
sight of Irish village to arrest our speed,
no sign of break down; and yet the train
halted. We looked out of the window;
saw the brakeman and a crowd OF passen-
gers gathering around the locomotive. and
dense smoke arising. What was the
matter? A hot axle
Thought then. as think now. that is
what is the matter with people everywhere.
In this swift. express" American life,
we 90 too fast for our endurance. We
think ourselves getting on splendidly.
when, in the midst OF our successes, we
come to q dead halt. What is the matter?
The nerves or muscles or brains give out
we have made too many revolutions in an
hour A hot axle
Men make the mistake of working &C.
cord.ng to their opportunities, and not &C.
cording to their capacity of endurance.
"Can run this train from Springfield to
Boston at the rate of fifty miles an honr?"
says an engineer. Yes. Then l will
run it, reckless of consequences !" Can
l be a merchant. and a president of
bank. and director in q life-insurance
company, and school commissioner, and
help edit paper, and supervise the poll
tics of our ward. aad run for Congress
IL can ~ the man SAYS to himself. The
store drives him; the bank drives him
the school drives him; politics drive him.
He takes all the seedlings 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
of ba han iii
rectors he is absent. In the excitement
of the most important 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. A hot axle
Literary men have great opportunities
opening in this day. If they take all that
open, they are dead men, or worse-living
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 are the religious news
papers through which you may preach,
and the musical journals through which
you may sing, and the agricultural peri
odicals through which you can plough,
and family newspapers in which you may
romp with the whole household around
the evening stand There are critigues to
be written, and reviews to be indulged in,
and poems to be chimed, and novels to be
When out of mans pen he
can shake recreation and friendship and
usefulness and bread. he is apt TO keep it
shaking. So great are the invitations to
literary work. that the professional men
OF the day are overdone. They sit, faint
and tagged out, on the verge of newspa-
pers and books; each one does the work
of three. And these men sit up late nights.
and choke down chunks of meat without
and scold their wives through
irritability, and maui innocent authors.
and run the physical machinery with a
liver miserably given out. The driving
shaft has gone fifty time a seconl. They
stop at no station. The steam-chest is hot
and swollen. The brain and the digestion
begin to smoke. Stop, We flying quills
Down braker' A hot axle
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 philoso-
piers; and of milliners. who, while their
customers were at the glass trying on their
spring hats. wrote volume of first-rate
poems. The fact is, no blacksmith ought
to be troubled with more than FIVE lam
guages; and. instead OF shoemakers be-
coming philosophers, we would like to
turn our surplus of philosophers into
shoemakers; and the supply of poetry is
SO much greater than the demand, that we
u;sh nilliuarc uould stick tn their h,,ai.
ness. Extraordinary examples of work
and endurance may do as much good.
Because Napoleon slept only four hours
night. hundreds of students have tried the
experiment; but, instead of Austerlitz and
Saragossa. there came of it only a sick
headache and a botch of recitation
T. DE WITT TALMAGE in Home Science
tor May.