The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1890-06-26
|SMAN NATURALLY LAN2
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in
Harper's Bazaar. Holds That
He Is Not.
Men and Women Spend Their
Days Devising EKhausting
Physical Labore.
Congenial Labor Il Delightful-Nfen Are
Miserable When They Engage In
1disfit Occupations.


devlslng for themselves the anoSs 1oOu0e
and exhausting physical labors. In an
alien cline, beneath an Indian sun, they
are up early and ont late, hunting, fishing,
tennis-playing, tilting at rings, tent-peR-
qine, playing polo, riding steeple- chases,
and taking part in dozen other
laborious or dangerous exercises, while
the calm Orientals look blandly on, won
dering ''if this be joy7" Nor il it the Eng
!ishman alone; wherever he goes, the Amer
English by birth, still proclaims himself
American by rearing and citizenship; and
his follower, Thomas Stevens, who en-
cirolsd the world on bicycle, is American
by training also. In the university town
where live, the fields are full every after
noon of young students running, Jumping,
playing base ball or cricket, or lacrosse, or
polo, OF hare and hounds; they are rowing
on the river; they are engaged IN nard
physical labor under the name OF play. l
can scarcely recall greater triumph OF
man over his accidents than when at Farls,
in the exposition summer of 1873 some
young Americans actually organized q base
ball club, and used to play in the Bots de
Boulogne when the thermometer stood at
ninety degrees.
What is the explanation Of all this amaz-
ing activity il, as Is often SAID INA man m Is
swer is that the theory Is pure invention,
and that man-at least the English speak
ing man of the temperate ZOnes-ls by ma
ture one Of the most energetic OF created
things. The reply is, moreover, that the
ton; 1.-THE labor we delight in physics pain"
To the child, constant activity is delight,
and sitting still is punishment; but in
some tropical races this instinct is soon
effaced; while in northern races, and espec-
tally the English it endures for
;o Top
confined to bodily exercises; 1 extends to the
modern newspaper but the recogni-
ton of this craving, and of an
incapacity of an inert condition?
ho1esn h ms that n We the
thing that has happened to any human be-
ing on.any part of this planet" But the
instinct that demands this is the instinct
that oonquers and controls the planet; the
desire to know concerning men implies the
desire to work among men, to help men.
men-at least, some men-into all the diff
ferent spheres of thought. The love Of
knowledge, of affordinR knowledge, of sup
plying original thought and research are
all successive forms OF natural develop
food or physical exercise. The toll that
these pursuits bring is, like physical toll,
its own reward, on two conditions only
that it be not excessive, and that it be the
kind of toll one loves.
"There is no true craftsman" as Ruskin
has more than once said, swho does not find
his work pleasure That il. he finds it a
pleasure if the conditions are fairly favora-
BILE; and all the schemes of the social re-
formers, from Fourier to Bellamy, are
brought to bear on just this point, not to
save men the necessity of labor, but to give
them labor so congenial and so reasonable
that it shall be delight. young Ameri-
can carpenter once told me that he should
be content to work on house building for
the rest of his life, if it could only be on
terms on which he was then working-hav-
ing good material to work on SO that he felt
some pride in his labor; and paid by the
day, so that he was not tempted to scamp"
his work, he said, for the sake of his fam
lily. Does not Edison enjoy his toll,
did not Ericsson enjoy his, apart from
all reference to the money or fame it
might yield? The artist Hayden in his
journal has a noble description of the joy
with which he paced his silent studio after
midnight, with great picture lifted on a
gigantic easel, and seen by 1.-The trembling
touch great canvas" he says, 81 think
! see my Creator smiling on all my efforts.
The moment do mean things for subsis-
tence. feel as if He had turned His back,
and, what's more, believe it, Even thus
felt Gibbon, though with less of pious ejac-
cline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' had
unrolled itself IN his studio and he was at
work, and so many humber man has
felt. Exchange the canvases; set Gibbon
to doing Haydon's work or Hayden to do
ing Gibbons, and doubtless each would be
miserable. There are many such unfortu-
nate combinations in the world, but the
evil does not lie in the work, only in the
misft.
We hear latterly great deal of lamenta-
tion-More, regret to say, than in regard
to any other profession-of the hardships
newspaper the other day that s.every great
writer acknowledges that his work demands
the most exacting and undinching devotion,
and that the drudgery of it is remembered
with pain and hatred almost to despera-
tion." The first part of this sentence is
how grateful we ought to be that most of
us are not and cannot be great writers!
Indeed, upon this definition, who are the
great writer's, if you come to that2 Ger
tainly not Emerson, with his calm cheer
fulness; not Thoreau, writing in his diary,
81 smiled silently at my incessant good
fortune;' not Longfellow, who only chafed
under the necessity of teaching be-
cause it interfered with the purely literary
work which he enjoyed SO much. II it be
alive, and not of the laborious kind-al-
Though in truth they were all laborious in
their respective ways-I should add that the
most lakorious author in America, if
the results be the test, is my next door
neighbor, and / am sure that no other de-
scription applies to him. If any one will
take either Of the ten volumes of the great
Narrative and Critical History of America,
and consider the vast amount of arduous
labor necessary for the mere editing and
revising and annotating and proof-reading
of that one volume, he will feel that here,
if anywhere, must be drudgery ito be re-
membered with pain and hated almost
with desperation" Yet it is a labor wholly
self-imposed, in addition to that
of experimenting one of the largest ibrar-
les in the country; and it gives such pleas
ure to him who endures il that he has no
sooner done with one vast enterprise than
he enters ON another. OF course there is
as much variety of temperament among
authors as in any other class; but should
unhesitatingly say, after good many years
of experience, that authors are, on the
whole, the happiest and most enyiable
class know; and this not because they es
cape toll, but because they SO often find in
their toll a pleasure. That is certainly true
of literature in America, which Mr.. Johr
Morley has lately said of it in England
that it is the happiest of all callines, and
is the most impe1ishable of all arts
Entitled to the Best
All are entitled to the best that th.,,
money will buy, SO every family shouN
have, ct once, bottle of the best fan;l,