Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1884-07-10
The Hot Axle.

The express train was flying from
Cork to Queenstown; il was going like
sixty-that is, about sixty miles an
hour. No sight of Irish village to ar
rest our speed, no sign of breakdown;
and yet the train halted. We looked
out of the window; saw the brakeman
and lot of the passengers gathering
around the locomotive and dense
smoke arising What was the mattere
A hot axle!
thought then, rs think now, that
is the matter with people everywhere.
In the swift express" American life,
we go too fast for our endurance. We
think ourselves getting on splendidly,
when, in the midst of our successes, we
come to n dead halt. What is the mat
ter? 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
according TO their opportunities. and
not according TO their capacity of en-
durance. ''Can l run this train from
Springfield to Boston ut the rate of fif-
ty miles an hourP" says an engineer.
"Yes." Then / will run it, reckless
of consequences. Can | be mer-
chant. and a 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 congressp Il
can," the man says 10 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 posi-
ton. Some day, ut the height of the
business season, he does not come to
the store. From the most important
meeting of the bank directors he is abb
sent. In the excitement of the most
important political campaign 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 opportuni-
ties opening in this day. II 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 con-
seriousness OF an audience of one, two,
or three hundred thousand readers!
There arc the religious newspapers
through which You may preach, and
the musical journals through which
you may sing, and the agricultural pa
pers through which you may pillow. and
the family newspapers through which
you may romp with the whole house.
hold around the evening stand. There
are critiques to be written, and reviews
to be INDUCED in, and poems to be
chimed, and novels to be constructed.
When out of a mans pen he can shake
recreation and friendship and useful
ness 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 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 irritable
ity, and maui innocent authors, and
run the physical machinery with liver
miserably given out. The driving shaft
has gone fifty times second. They
stop at no station. The steam chest is
hot and swollen. The brain and diges-
ton begin to smoke. Stop, We flying
quillsl down brake!" A hot axle!
Some Of the young people have read
till they are crazed = of learned
blacksmiths, who at the forge conquer
ed 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 first rate poems. The fact
is, no blacksmith ought to be troubled
with more than five languages; and in
stead of shoemakcrs becoming philoso-
pliers, we would like 10 turn our sur
plus OF philosophers into shoemakers;
and the supply of poetry is so much
greater than the demand that we wish
the milliners would stick 10 their busi-
ness. Extraordinary examples of work
and endurance may do as much good.
Because Napoleon slept only four hours
a night, hundreds Of students have
tried the experiment; but, instead of an
Austerlitz and Saragossa. there only
came of it n sick-headache and a botch
of recitation. De VAT Talmage in