preëminence of our organization makes also its peril. Denmark is said
to be impoverished by the disproportion of the learned to the
industrial class; production is insufficient, and too much of a good
thing cripples the country. The nervous system is a learned class in
the body; it contributes dignity and superior uses, but makes no corn
grow in the physiological fields. A brain of great animation and power
is a perilous freight for the stanchest body; in a weak and shattered
body it is like gold in a spent swimmer's pocket,--the richer it would
make him on dry land, the less chance it gives him of arriving there.
That this danger is not imaginary too many are able to testify.--Few
scenes in Rabelais are more exquisitely ludicrous than that in which he
pictures the monk Panurge in a storm at sea. The oily ecclesiastic is
terrified as only a combination of hypocrite and coward can be; and, in
the extremity of his craven distress, he fancies that any situation on
shore, no matter how despicable, would be paradise. So at length he
whines, "Oh that I were on dry land, and somebody kicking me!" In a
similar manner--similar, save that farce deepens to tragedy--many a man
in America of opulent mental outfit, but with only a poor wreck of a
body to bear the precious cargo, must often have been tempted to cry,
"Oh that I had a sound digestion, and were some part of a dunce!" In
truth, we are a nation of health-hunters, betraying the want by the
search. It were to be wished that an accurate computation could be made
how much money has been paid in the United States, within a score of
years, for patent medicines. It would buy up a kingdom of respectable
dimensions. So eager is this health-hunger, that it bites at bare
hooks. The "advertising man" of Arnold's Globules offers his services
as nostrum-puffer-general, and appeals to past success as proof of his
abilities in this line. But Arnold's Globules will sell no whit the
worse. Is the amiable Mr. Knox right, after all? Doubtless, we answer,
the American organization is more easily disordered than the