Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1884-05-09

The express train was aging from Cork 10
| Qussnstown; 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 q
crowd of passengers gathering around the 10
comotige, and dense smoke arising. What
was the matter? hot axle!
[ thought then, I think now, that is
what is the matter with people everywhere.
In this swift express American life, we go
too fast for our endurance. We think our
selves getting on splendidly, VIXEN, in the
midst of our successes, we come to 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
axlei
Men make the mistake of working accord
ing to their opportunities, and not according
to their capacity of endurance. "Can 1 ran
this train from Springfield to Boston at the
rate of fifty miles an heur?" says an engineer.
Yes. 'tThen l will run it, reckless of conse
quences" Can 1 be merchant, and presi-
dent of bank, and a director in life insur-
ance company, and school commissioner,
and help edit paper, and supervise the poll
ties of our ward and run for Congress? 81
can!" the man says to himself. The store
drives him; the bank 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 sea-
son, he dees not come to the store. From
the most important meeting Of this bank d1-
reetors he ia absent In the excitement of
the most important political canvass he fails
to be at the place appointed. What ls 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 deal men, or worss-liVlng
men who ought to be dead. The pen runs 80
easy when you have good ink and smooth
paper and an easy desk to write on, and the
consciousness of an audience of one TIVE, or
three hundred thousand readers. There are
the religious newspapers through which you
may preach and the musical journals through
which you may sing, and the agricultural
periodicals. through which you can plough,
and family newspapers in which you may
ronap with the whole household 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 con-
struoted. When cut 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 over
done. 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 missrably given out. The driving
shaft has gone fifty times a second. They
stop at no station. The steam-chest is hot
and swollen. The brain and digestion begin
to smoke. Stop, ye aying quilts! "Down
brakeI" A hot axle!
Some of our young people have read-till
they are crazed-of learned blacksmiths, who
at the forge conquered thirty languages; and
of shoemakers. who, while pounding sole
leather, got to be philosophers; and of mil
liners, who, while their customers were at
the glass trying on their spring hats, wrote
volume of irst-rate poems. The fact is, no
| blacksmith ought to be troubled with more
than five languages, and instead of shoemakers
becoming 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 wish nllliners
would stick to their business. 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
Austsrlitz and Saragossa, there came of 1t
| only q sick headache and q botch of recita-
| tion-Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, In Home
| Science for May.