The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1884-09-27
Hot Axle.

The express-train was flying from Cork
to Queenstown; it was going like sixty
that is sixty miles an hour. No sight of
an Irish village to arrest our speed, no
sign of breakdown; and yet the train hal
ted. We looked out of the window saw
the brakeman and crowd gather around
the locomotive and dense smoke arising.
What was the matter? A hot axlel
| thought then, as think now, that is
the matter with the people everywhere.
In this swift express" American life, we
go too fast fast for our endurance. We
think ourselves getting on splendidly, when,
in the midst of our success, we come to a
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 mistahe of working ac-
cording to their opportunities, and not to
their capacity of endurance. "Can 1 run
this train from Springfield to Boston at
the rate of fifty miles an hour?" says an
engineer. Yes. "Then l will run it, re-
gardless of consequences! Can be a
merchant, and president of bank, and
director in life insurance company, and
school commissioner, and help edit a pa
per, and supervise the politics of our ward,
and run for Congress? Il cam" says the
man to himself The store drives him;
the bank drives him; the school drives him;
politics 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 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
an audience of one, two or three hundred
thousand readers. There are the religious
newspapers through which you may preach,
and the musical journal through which you
may sing, and the agricultural periodicals
through which you can plough, and the
family newspapers in which you may
romp 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
constructed, When out of a mans pen he
Il ouI fr,aD1ch.n nd
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 newspapers and
books; each one does the work of three; and
these men sit up late at night, and choke
down chunks of meat without mastication,
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 times second They stop at no sta
ton. The steamchests are hot and swollen.
The brain and digestion begin to smoke.
Stop, ye flying quills "Down brake!' A
hot axle!
Some of our young people have reac-
till they are crazed-of learned blaeksmiths,
who at the forge conquered thirty Ian
guages, and of shoemakers, who pounding
sole=leather, got to be philosophers; and of
milliners, who, while customers were at the
glass trying on their spring hats, wrote
a volume of frst-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 philoso-
pliers into shoemakers, and the supply of
poetry is so much greater than the demand,
that we wish milliners would stick to their
business. Extraordinary examples of work
and endurance may do as much good. Be
cause Napoleon slept only four hours a
night, hundreds of students have tried the
experiment; but instead of Austerlitz and
Saragossa, there came of it only sick
headache and botch of a recitatiop.-T
De Wit 4dFmage.