Waterbury evening Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1887-1895, 1893-01-26
BUSY AMERICANS.
An English Onlooker Upon Our DIstaste
for Leisure.

for Leisure.
All Americans agree, we think, in
believing that their country is pervadei
by distaste for leisure. Some of the q
describe it. like the acute Frenchman,
M. Paul de Rousiers, as a passion for
climbing" others as a craving for sin
tense" life, and others, again. as con-
tempt for idleness; but all admit the
impeachment We have cross-eXam-
ined many on the point, and they are
unanimous in their consent that no
born American of any grade ever re
tires" or avowedly gives himself up, in
America, at least, to a life without
dehnlte, and in a sense compulsory, Oc-
cupation. He may actually do but lit
tie, but unless he is seriously sick, he
pretends to himself and the world that
he is doing something, and usually is
doing it. There are, it is true, few
idle or contemplative men of means; but
when they desire to indulge their tastes
they go to Europe" and there are a
few literary men or collectors who do
not do much; but they are all supposed,
if it be only through courtesy, to be
preparing to do
No American acknowledges himself
to belong to the leisured classes, even if
he has no motive for exertion. The
popular politician works till he has
stroke, or is able to say that his doctor
fears one; the professional in request
keeps on taking all the fees he can get
until death overtal<es him; the success
full man of business enlarges his trans
actions until he is able to bequeath them
to his son, who again recommences the
same eternal climb. The success of the
father, indeed, seems to act as a stimu
lus on the son, until there is a large
class of families in the American cities
which seem, like the Rothschilds, to re-
gard the pursuit of wealth through
business as hereditary duty which will
be obligatory on them till the world
cools, or till there is nothing left in it
which will yield even a fractional per-
centage of interest Scores of Ameri-
cans have achieved all the business tri-
umphs they desire, are so full of money
| that the surplus yields them neither
pleasure nor excitement nor soothing;
but still they go on unresting, and are
often tempted by kind of safety into
larger and larger undertakings. The
universal desire of Europe for period
| of contented calm seems to have no
place in their hearts; they do not care
to make room for the young, even if
| they are their own sons; and as to leav-
ing the arena clear for their rivals, they
would regard the suggestion as an in
sipid jest.
They are hypochondriacs almost to a
man, sometimes to degree which
makes the doctors they trust look very
grave indeed; but they dislike holidays,
and, when pressed, declare that they
are more anxious when outside the
track than when they are pulling with
the team. They are not always unaware
that they are spending irreplaceable
1erergy, and if genuinely religious men,
as is not unfrequently the case, have
fits of ''conc ern' about their worldli-
ness, usually removed by lavish gifts;
but they fail to see any connection be-
tween leisure and unworldliness, or
hold that, as idle men, they would be
even greater sinners. They lament the
strain, but stand the strain, until some
fine morning someone of the many dis
eases described as "heart," or NERVES, y
or STROKES finishes the contest by
either prostrating them or killing them
outright. The old English feeling that
a man ought to be tranquil in the even
ing of his days is as far from them as
the Italian feeling that life would be
too happy were it not for work, or the
French feeling that hard industry i:
honorable from thirty to fiftyfve, bu
before that waste of youth, and after
that something of voluntary humilia
ton. They feel, in fact, or at least act
on positive distaste for leisure.
This is remarkable accompaniment
of civilization, and the ordinary explain
atoms do not, we confess, seem to III
satisfactory. 1t is often attributed t.
climate, and, no doubt, the clearer al
of the United States tends to increas'
excitement; but then, eXcitemen
should all the sooner produce wearines
of the exhausting contest, and it doe
not. Moreover, there are a good man.
climates within the United States, anC
we do not learn that any one of then
ever produced in any of the nativ'
Indians the restlessness of the whites
rather it developed in them an apatheti
| calm and an aversion to all work not o
, an especially honorific kind, like tn
work of war or of the chase. A re-
Indian is as disinclined to monotonou
: toll as an English squire.
i