Living too Fast by Boston Globe

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 24, 1875

Living too Fast.

By Boston Globe

As a business nation we occasionally make very grave mistakes, not in the matter of mere dollars and cents, though a good deal may even be said on that subject; but in our endeavors to stand in the front rank as merchants and politicians, we draw too heavily on the bank of nature, and, in consequence, become bankrupt. An honest business man will hesitate before expending more than he earns; in fact his prosperity is based on the maxim that receipts should greatly overbalance outlays; but in everything concerning health this judicious axiom is forgotten, and, as a result, we die of the American disease—nervous prostration. Man, in struggling against nature, has an opponent who makes no allowances for mistakes, an antagonist without spite, but also without pity. If moderation be observed, the antagonism is healthful, is productive of decent ambition; but the moment humanity rushes into excesses it finds itself opposed by a power against which it is vain to struggle, over which it is impossible to triumph.

We boast of our energy, and with some reason, for we have no medium even in trifles. As we destroy sleep by brooding over vast financial schemes, so we destroy health in the interest of real estate. We cannot eat a sandwich like the rest of the world, but gulp it down without mastication for fear of losing a minute or two of valuable time. When an overworked stomach protests, when a weary brain gives unmistakable signs of exhaustion, the lesson is not read aright; the overburdened animal is not rested, but is forced into fresh activity by means of alcoholic poisons. Another law of our existence is, that we must never be seen without a cigar or drugged “fine cut” tobacco in our mouths. Moderation even in this luxury is discarded, and our blood, like our clothes, is tainted with nicotine. Perhaps it is impolite to refer to the quantity of saliva daily lost by a shrewd business man; but what society ignores nature takes a strict account of as evidenced in sunken cheeks, dry lips, and lack-luster eyes.

A feverish nervousness, begotten of our routine labors, makes us fretful, ill-natured, and dyspeptic. Everything is regarded from a business point of view; everything which has no direct bearing upon business is looked upon as of trifling value. We marry as a speculation, live for money, and die that our names may be used as synonims of remarkable business tact. All is sacrificed for business; life itself is only another name for rise and fall in stocks; and so we go on day by day accumulating money, day by day burning away our physical energy, day by day deadening our nervous sensibility, until exhaustion and a tombstone complete the unity of the tragedy. We have already lost many of our distinguished citizens through the American disease, and unless we are content to live more moderately we shall lose many more. As it is, life is short enough, and pleasures few and far between. If we cannot all be great we can at least be indifferently sensible, and not willfully burn out the candle of life by lighting it at both ends.—Boston Globe.