The Daily News TUESDAY, JANUARY 23. THE STRENUOUS LIFE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8035, 23 January 1906, Page 2

The Daily News TUESDAY, JANUARY 23. THE STRENUOUS LIFE.

Tjiis is tiie ago of strenuousness and tonics, of energy and pick-me-ups, of excitement and " the day after." It I is the ago of toil and struggle, an age in whirl) tlie " top dog " gets the bono, and the " biui " underneath very little consideration. Each of us is born with dili'urently patterned brains and a different quality of muscle. Many men with good brains are using iwlill'ere it muscle t.o make a living withal, and many men are using the small amount of brain served out to them, when Nature clearly intended them for navvies. That is because this is the strenuous age and the I average man wants to " get on " more quickly than Mother Nature intended. We think it was that energetic person, Foster Fraser who ask--31 fc'u young manager of a hug American concern where all the old men were. Did they have a separate place for the aged in the works • The manager replied that they certainly did have a separate place for the people, but it was not within the ivorks. If the stranger would jump aboard the automobile he would show him the place where the old men stayed. ThCy went along to the cemetery! Some of the eld me i were half a century old when they died.

Tuts frantic baste to be a bit better than the other fellow doesn't stop at the doir of the factory or the threshold of the .shop, ft gets into the field of •sport. That's why the "lias-beers' of sport do i ot stiike you as being maivels either in physique or mental qualifications. That is why, in fact, a stupid person who wields Indian clubs for a day and a half—because some other stupid person swung clubs for a day and a quarter dies an atrophied old man at forty-five , and that is why the famous cyclist becomes a charge 011 the country by being a patient, vrith a diseased heart, in a hospital for incurables. They play football in America, as you may have heard. Tliey play it for all they know, and a bit to spare. A few w-eeks ago Harvard, one of the great schools, played Yale, also one < f the gieat schools. At the conclusion of the first spell the players were so knocked up that the surgeons used hypodermic injections of strychnia to '■ give 'em snap arid ginger/' It was the hypodermic injections that played the rest of the game, and not the strenuous youngsters of the universities. The eager worker of to-day—-we are not talking of the eight-hours" a-day unionist, for obvious reasons—gets tired. Nature tells him he wants rest. The strenuous doctor tells liim he wants (jitinine and iron, and he believes the doctor rather than Nature. Nature gave men an appendix, and the doctors say Natur e didn't know what she was up to. So oil'comes the appendix, and in comes tho bill for £SO. These are the days of street cars, short journeys, and long bouts of dyspepsia. It wouldn't do to walk instead of ride, because that would cure dyspepsia. What are tonics for, anyhow ?

The man ivlio can earn- one- hundredweight sucks all day is no hero, lmt the person who can lift six hundred weight two feet is a marvel. Why ?. The horse that gets to tlm judge's 1 box n fraction of a second sooner than the next horse couldn't pull a bigger load or do anything more useful than the slow animal, hut: in the eyes of the strenuous man lie is a ninrvel. The person who shoots more pigeons than the other fellow is a champion, not because the birds have attacked him and lie's out to save his precious skin, but because lie is the superior '• sport," und has .strenuously striven to become perfect in an absolutely useless art. How often does someone point out. to you a battered wreck, with the explanation that " So-and-So used to be a tip-top lawyer," or a " clinking architect," or something else superior. The strenuous life is the reason for brainwrecks. Nature calls out for rest, and the strenuous one thinks rest means beer, or morphia, or opium. Nature kicks every time she is in tertered with. You hear that the Premier works for forty-eight hours lit a stretch and doesn't sleep for a week, Next you hear that the strenuous one is seriously ill. Then he gets better, and is at the strenuous game first day out of the hospital, so to speak, Anyhow, his spoech tills ton columns, and you jndgo from that. You also gi ther that the man who shortlnmded the ten columns lives the strenuous life, and wears spectacles in consequence, but no hair? And what are we going to do about it ? Nothing, of course. We never do. .Seems that man is an animal made to be knocked about. The strongest of the strenuous ones survive ; the weak go to the wall. Perhaps Providence planned the strenuous life to save her doing a, lot of weeding out,

If wo followed Nattiro';-; dictates we'd go to bod at smi-down, and get, out of it at sun-up, and the bed would be Nature'* bod Mother Earth, Our forefathers went to lied at sun-down just because the strenuous life wasn't invented, nor gas either, nor liows|>aj>ei.s either. Nntnvo in this instance hasn't taken .such a terrible revenge. She lets the average of us - excluding the Americans-live longer than the average of our forefathers, and on the whole turns out a ! letter ami heavier article than she used to, where shy is let have just a little of her way, as ulie certainly |sin New Zealand. She has a different way tor different samples of her handiwork. If this wash I so the Maori would thrive under our own conditions, and as the sons o! llam thrive in the States of America, despite the strenuous life, The cure Tor Ihe evils of (the strenuous life is, of course, relaxation, and not patent medicine. or any other device of people who desire to supersede Mature. Nature cast us each in a different mould, and intended us to be navvies, or statesman, or drapers nevor drones n the hive,