Waterbury evening Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1887-1895, 1892-12-30
GOOD HEALTH.
A Very Desirable, But Very Rare
Blessing.
Nature Intended That We Should Be Well
and Strong-Why Many of Us Are
Not So-A Lesson from
the Past.

1t cannot be denied, we suppose, that
health, next to goodness, is worthy Of
the first consideration.
No one can be happy without health,
and there are no circumstances what
ever which can make one utterly miser-
able when his health is perfect.
A sound liver, a good, long-winded
pair of lungs, and free circulation of
blood, are worth a great deal more to
the happy possessor than bank stocks,
government bonds and interests in
blocks of brown stone.
If, as writer of prominence asserts,
spirituous liquors are the cause of nine
tenths of the murders committed, then
it is safe to say that torpid livers and
bad digestions are the cause of the re-
mainder; for ill-health sours the dis
position, and destroys the sweetest
temper in the world.
AS we live, and the world moves on,
and our habits of observation have
broader fields over which to roam, we
become painfully aware of the fact
that as a race Americans are physically
degenerating.
Go where we may, we find everybody
complaining of some ache or pain. No
body is well. Everybody is taking
medicine. Pill makers become mil
lionaires in a few years; the man of
bitters drives his four-in-hand and rears
his family in palace of brown stone.
Why is it?
Is the air less pure and health-giving
than it was in the days of our fore
fathers? Docs the sun scorch out of the
atmosphere the subtle principle of vi
tality, or the moon drop down malarial
influences along with her rain of silver
light? Does the earth send forth pois-
onous miasmas, and the clear rivers en-
gender more deadly fogs and vapors
than of old?
Many Of our men, nearly all of our
| women, are delicate" 1t is headache,
or neuralgia, or dyspepsia, or indiges-
ton, or weakness in the limbs, or back,
and the least eXertion wearies, and Ia
Dor of any kind is simply impossible!
Now, all this is not as it should be.
Nature intended that we should be we'll
and strong, and able to endure the shak-
ing and rude jOstling of life, without
being laid up in consequence.
| And again we ask, why is it?
Well, then, in the first place, we are
afraid of the kind of labor known as
manual. We work with our brains,
| anu our WIS, DuJ we OOu like 10
our hands to it.
From somewhere and somebody we
have got the idea that manual labor is
not SO dignified as counting room and
Office drudgery, and men who might be
good carpenters and masons are con-
| tent to become poor lawyers and book
keepers.
A hundred years ago our GRANDPA
1 ~ k11A ND
hearty, and did not dream of such a thing
as weak nerves and neuralgia.
The men laid the ak at the root of the
forest oak, and cleared the smiling
fields which now greet our eyes, and
reared the humble homes were our
parents were born. They had no serv-
ants to help them - they struck the
blows with their own strong arms, and
at night they were weary enough to
make their couches of straw seem to
them soft as down:
The women attended to the frugal
household affairs, and carded, spun
and wove the cloth for the clothing of
their families, and, when this was done,
they went into the fields and welded
the hoe and the rake, side by side with
their husbands or brothers, and did not
have the headache on account of it.
Our own grandmother, who was a
delicately raised English girl, left her
luxurious home at the age of sixteen,
to become the bride of Yankee sailor
all for love-and crossed the seas tc
this, then almost uncivilized, New Eng
! land, and travelled with her husband
on horseback, more than a hundred
miles inland to bowling wilderness
inhabited only by bears and Indians
and forty miles from any white mans
ha bitation.
G Here she took up her life duties in &
, hut built of poles and rooted with bark
Here she reared to an honorable man
hood seven sons, and to a virtuous WON
: anhood four daughters, and having
lived to see the desert around her bios
) som like the rose and the smoke of civ
ilization rise from hundreds of fireside
in the thriving village which haC
sprung up at their feet, passed quietl,
away at the age of ninety seven, hav
ing never consulted the doctor or mad
PRINTING.