GREAT MEN'S BODIES
one of the severest tests of the brain and nerves, and takes a deal out of a man. Medical men say that a few hours of it a day is enough. Yet here this marvellous man, not content with calling on his genius daily for what would be rational and ample, forces through a maze of work in his great thought-factory, so connected, varied, and intricate that it seems almost incredible that one man could have done it all, even in a hundred years. And then on top of it he takes the very hour set apart for change and recreation, and studying every odd character and strange sign and queer freak wherever he goes, gives himself, in all probability, double work through nearly all of it. Now if that hour had been on the golf-links, or at the sculls, or chasing a fox, or swinging Gladstone's axe, his mind would have had a real rest—a scour. He would have inhaled twice as much air; would have given his arms, shoulders, neck, chest, and back considerable to do—would have unbent the bow—and would have gone back to his work refreshed, recreated, remade, and ready for it, as Gladstone, with a better method, has kept his mental powers in great working- order for high-class and endless work, not up to fifty-eight, like Dickens, but clear up to eighty-eight—and he not naturally strong at that. Is it not unfortunate that Schiller (composing far into the night), Scott, and Dickens did not see how their breakneck pace and lack of sensible, regular, vigorous play—with brain-work shut off at least one hour a day—would have likely saved them each for many more years?
COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON
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