Waterbury evening Democrat., 1891-04-01
MENTAL ovER.woRk.

VIC i've In social and business at
 mosphere of excitement, and our phys
 ical environments are rather stimulating
 than restorative. We make provision
 for action, in our social, political and
 educational organizations, and reform
 and progress and never rest are our
 constant watchwords; yet our frame is
 so constituted that adequate rest is one
 of its chief organic needs and essential
 preliminaries to progress.
 Hired nature's sweet restorer, balmv
 sleep" is not courted as she ought to
 be. "Sleep! balm of hurt minds! na-
 lures sesond course! sore labor's bath!
 Sleep! that knits up the raveled sleeve
 of care" and compensates the waste and
 wear and worry of our mental life, is
 too much ignored in all of our arrange
 ments for work of mind. Our amuse-
 ments and recreations too, are mainly
 provided for during hours which were
 best devoted to rest and sleep.
 To us the night cometh not now, as
 in the ancient days, when no man can
 work; night with us, when the brain ought to be at rest, has become the chief time of action. At that part of the day when the heart throbs should
 be lessened and the over-taxed organ allowed a little repose between it's
 beats, its pulsations are accelerated to meet the imperative calls for blood. of an unresting and unrestful brain whose
 ideational cells and percipient centers, are kept in ceaseless activity by the de- mands of late school work, midnight committee meetings of merchants, manufacturers, manipulators of markets and managers of ''the machine" of party politics. To these we add the neural prod and whip and spur of artificial alcoholic land even tea and coffee) stimulation at the wrong time of day, when an inclination to repose and not over-action of the nervous system and mind should be encouraged.
 The man or woman who, in this ace of demand for action, sleeps and feeds inadequately and works on, is destined to break down or die prematurely; and if the demand of tired nature for repose and repair be unwisely and cruelty an swered, as, alas, it too often is in our time! by the goad of artificial stimula- tion, the end comes suddenly in those startling brain breaks which now too often abruptly sadden hearths and homes that might have had happiness hOA JS0AS hdA "1oCN Idp6IQGQI prevailed in the household head and beyond the homestead; but in this great world of action the light of great actors on the worlds stage goes out as sudden ly as shut-off gas jet. Great mental suns are eclipsed in the twinlxling of an eye, and while it ought yet to be day to them, from neglect of such precautions and care of self as the humane society exacts for our horses.
 The nation scarcely gets over its for a great general whose name during the late war was as famil- far as the Potomac, dead too soon for lack of rest, and another who in his life was as brave as the bravest of Gettys- burg and who will be remembered till the history of southern reconstruction shall be forgotten, whose physique gave promise of a longer lease of life, before another brave military chieftain pre- maturely falls and vice-president drops dead suddenly, because his heart nerves descending from the head and upper part of the spinal cord were de- prived by ceaseless activity of that power which comes from adequate rest, to keep the heart going. He needed not the warning of previous brain failure which demanded judicious rest as the condition of subsequent moderate of function.
 One of the greatest financiers of the present day drops dead of heart-failure, due to over brain and nerve strain. dur. Ing a business conversation. Killed by his own hand, snapped out by his own at time of life when his father had only begun some of his most successful financial manipulations in the monetary world. He had not a hardened to mental endur- ance like that which the rigid environ nents of his fathers youth had made for him. Another scion of greater ancestor, inheriting millions and the of great trunk line, now lies mentally prostrate at time of life when the father, like the great Wander Oilt was just in the zenith of his power.
 Two prominent and powerful pulpits of our city were but lately draped in and congregations grieving, and would not be comforted because of owed ones taken from them by a sudden apoplexia; and these two dire calami- ties might, by timely and judicious rest oI thelr victims, have been averted. The lesson of those sudden break towns is obvious. They are natures Tiolent penalties-her capital punish nents for over brain pressure and neg ected rest.
 Not indeed that all use alcoholic stin- 1lants, but by all the excitants of brain action man can devise his poor brain breaks down when it ought to be in the 7ery prime of power. There seems to pc sort of morbid pride, like the sui tidal manias which sometimes sweep 'ver the land, displaying itself in the wish of our best and hard-to-be-spared nen, ito die in harness" like an over- lriven horse. But what sense, to sensi- ole people, is there in this foolish idea?
 How much better to work longer, if } little slower, as in the course of ma, 'ure we approach the grave, and finish np our work here without startling de- and more leisurely wrap the