Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/846

826, fill both body and brain with a strength that needs no artificial spur, and that can be used without tiring. I speak, of course, only for myself; many hard workers, wise workers, think otherwise; to many, very many, life must be lived in London, that wonderful wilderness of crowded humanity, and what it, and it only, can give is a necessity of existence that neither prudence nor fancy may interfere with. There are others, too, who profess themselves to be, and no doubt are, never so well, so attuned for hard work, as when cabined mid the bricks and mortar of London. Here, again, as in the other case, let each man be a law unto himself.

One other word I should like to say on the point of exercise. "You do not take enough exercise" is the common reproach made to the complaining patient; and forthwith off he rushes, to bring into sudden play muscles long disused and limbs that have forgot their cunning, till he finds to his angry astonishment that tired, not refreshed, and aching in every joint and bone, he has but made himself more incapable of work than he was before. No doubt the longer a man can keep up youth's standard of violent delights the better for him; but few men can do that with impunity, still fewer can go back to it when once the touch has been lost; the attempt is generally as dangerous as it is ridiculous. For myself I frankly own that I do not believe that hard exercise of the body is compatible with hard exercise of the brain. Nothing, I am firmly persuaded, brings a man to the end of his tether so soon. The exercise the brain-worker needs is the exercise that rests, not that fatigues. He needs to lull, to soothe his brain; and this he will do best in the fresh air, by quiet, and the gentle employment of the limbs and muscles that have been idle while he worked. It is this need, as it seems to me, that tells most strongly against London. What rest and refreshment is there for him who after a hard spell of work at his desk or in his studio, when

goes out into the noisy, crowded, reeking street? No rest comes to him from any beautiful sight, no rest from any beautiful sound; the air is no fresher than that he has left. Everywhere is a distracting sense of hurry, of the fever and the fret of existence. Like the weary Titan "with labor-dimmed eyes" and ears, alas! not deaf, he goes staggering on to a goal that daily grows more certain and more near. But here, again, I speak only of my own experience, which I would not for the world essay to make the wisdom of others.

In all these things, then, I believe a man must be his best physician. And, beyond the reasons mentioned, he must be so because only he can know what system it is possible for him to follow. Go abroad, says one doctor; get a horse and ride, says another; put your work away and take a thorough holiday, preaches a third. Golden counsel! but, alas, wind-dispersed and vain to so many of us! How