the prodigal activity displayed by their descendants, and made possible
only by the sturdy contest with Nature which their ancestors have waged.
That such a life is still led by multitudes of our countrymen is what
alone serves to keep up our pristine force and energy. Are we not merely
using the interest on these accumulations of power, but also wastefully
spending the capital? From a few we have grown to millions, and already
in many ways the people of the Atlantic coast present the peculiarities
of an old nation. Have we lived too fast? The settlers here, as
elsewhere, had ample room, and lived sturdily by their own hands, little
troubled for the most part with those intense competitions which make it
hard to live nowadays and embitter the daily bread of life. Neither had
they the thousand intricate problems to solve which perplex those who
struggle to-day in our teeming city hives. Above all, educational wants
were limited in kind and in degree, and the physical man and woman were
what the growing state most needed.

How much and what kind of good came of the gradual change in all these
matters we well enough know. That in one and another way the cruel
competition for the dollar, the new and exacting habits of business, the
racing speed which the telegraph and railway have introduced into
commercial life, the new value which great fortunes have come to possess
as means towards social advancement, and the overeducation and
overstraining of our young people, have brought about some great and
growing evils, is what is now beginning to be distinctly felt. I should
like, therefore, at the risk of being tedious, to re-examine this
question--to see if it be true that the nervous system of certain
classes of Americans is being sorely overtaxed--and to ascertain how
much our habits, our modes of work, and, haply, climatic peculiarities,
may have to do with this state of things. But before venturing anew
upon a subject which may possibly excite controversy and indignant