"THE FEAR THAT KILLS."

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1672, 26 September 1887, Page 3

"THE FEAR THAT KILLS."

More temperate diet, more eiry bedrooms, better drained houses, and more effectual ablutions, ate real Improvements on the habits of our ancestors. But the excess to frhich hygienic precautions are carried, the proportion which such cares now occupy amid the serious interests of life, la becoming absurd, and conducting us rapidly to • state of things wherein, if we ate not ' killed ' by fear, we are paralysed by it for all natural enjoyment. The old healthful, buoyant spirit seema already fled from the majority of English homes. Aged people (from this and, no donbt, other concurrent causes) seldom exhibit now that gentle gaiety whioh so often brightened with hues of sunset the long, calm evening of a well-spent life, after the ' six days' work ' was done. The middle-aged are one and all hagridden by anxiety ; and as to the young, If we may trast tbo reports which reach ub from the great schools, a very marked change haa come over them, curiously indicative of the sensitiveness of young ■oulb to the chill breath of the Zeitgeist. The lads have grown colder and harder, and are Interested ln peoaniary profits rather than m nobler professional ambition-. Nay, we have been told (it fs a large demand upon credulity !) that English schoolboys have almost ceased to be reoklesß about heat or cold, about eating Indigestible things, about climbing trees and precipices, about going on deep water m unseawortby boatß ; m short, about all those pursuits which excited the perennial alarms of their fond mothers. Many boys are to be found, it is stated (I write always under reservation), who may be described as Mollycoddled, so caofc-oua are they about their health add their limbs. Urchins In round jackets speak of the danger of checking perspiration after cricket, snd decline to partake of unripe apples and paßtry on the never-before-heard-of ground of dyspeps.& Invited m the holidays to the totstatlc < lark ' of a long Bxcurßion on horseback, they have declined with reference to the playfulness of their pony's heels ; and have been seen to shrink from a puppy's caressing tongue, murmuring tbe ominous word ' Babies.' In short, our girls, who are just acquiring physical courage as a new virtue, are ■ometlmes braver tban their brothers, who thlojjt It ' good form ' to profess dlsincllnation to risk tbeir valuable person..— ReTlQw," '