Devils Lake inter-ocean. (Devils Lake, Ramsey Co., Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1905, 1885-03-28
The Age of M.lanchOly.

The prevalence of mela 1cholia, mild
or intense. among the cultivated classes,
and especially amongst educated and
reflective men, in these days, would,
there are good grounds for believing,
seem portentous could it only be faith
fully set forth. Could the secrets of
some case-books be revealed, it would
be found that men in high places, pro-
tessional men in active employment,
business men in prosperous circum-
stances, literary men who arc delight
ing the world with their wit and genius,
artists who are illuminating life with
glowing colors, students who are gain
ing prizes and distinctions, tradesmen
who have climbed to success on the
r%uin-heaps of competition, and idlers
who have only to amuse themselves.
are all visited by melancholy, revealed
only to their doctors and sometimes to
their domestic circle, which darkens
existence as with terrible storm-clouds
now and then or rob it persistently of
brightness, reducing it to a monoton-
GUS leaden gloom. Behind many a
'shining morning face there is a deep,
dull wretchedness; under many a stol-
id exterior there is racking, mental
misery. A curious yet familiar sight
is to see the mask suddenly cast aside
in the consulting-room, and the face
that but a minute ago was cheerful or
serene gathering into an expression of
suffering or despair as the skeleton IN
the cupboard is disclosed. We are all
meeting in daily life victims of morbid
melancholy, whom we should as soon
suspect of being afflicted with small
pox or janndice, but who are even in
our presence struggling beneath a load
of it, and who, when we leave them,
sink nigh exhausted by the efforts re-
CURED for its concealment. Could we
in invisible companionship follow home
that friend who has delighted US at the
dinner table by his brilliant conversa-
ton, we should perhaps see him throw
himself in his chair, in his dark study,
and sit for hours, absorbed in ague,
dismal thought. Could we thus pursue
the judg e who has won our admiration
in court by the logical precision and
ethical propriety with which he has
distinguished the offenses Of the Grim
inals brought before him, we should
perhaps find him pacing the floor of his
bedroom and wringing his hands under
the horrible. if fictitious. conviction
that he is himself more guilty and
stepped in sin than the wretch he has
sent to penal servitudc. Could we
keep watch oter that popular preacher
who has stirred us by his fervid words,
and strengthened the foundations of
our faith by his confident d%ogmatism,
we should observe him perhaps tossing
sleepless and distressed throughout the
livelong night, haunted by doubts and
perpleHities. and by the incessant
whispering of a voice which asks:
We're It not better not to be,
Than live SO full of misery2
Could we in disembodimcnt remain a
little with that good physician who has
just given US such sound advice and
urged us to fight against the dcspond-
ency for which we have consulted him,
we would perceive him, perhaps, as
soon US he has dismissed his patient,
hurry on to the house of a brother
practitioner and pour fourth in his car,
with tremulous anxiety. a description
of the hopeless diseases from which he
conceives himself to be suffering, and
which exists only in his hypochondriac
fancy,-MedicuL Times.