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The Book of Courage, a non-fiction book by John T. Faris |
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Chapter 3. The Courage Of Industry - 5. Abusing The Will To Work |
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_ CHAPTER THREE. THE COURAGE OF INDUSTRY V. ABUSING THE WILL TO WORK There are times when the real test of a worker's courage is not his readiness to work but his will to curb the temptation to be intemperate in work. When the word "intemperance" is mentioned most people think at once of strong drink; many people are unwilling to think of anything but strong drink. As if where there is no temptation to drink there can be no temptation to intemperance! Paul had a different idea. When he wrote to the Corinthians, "Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things," he must have had in mind scores of different ways in which intemperance endangers success. If people were to make a list of some of the aspects of intemperance that are characteristic of modern life, it is quite likely that a large proportion would omit one of the most serious of all--the intemperance of the man who lives to work, who drives himself to work, who is never happy unless he is working, who makes himself and others unhappy because he labors too long, and too persistently, perhaps with the result that his own promising career is wrecked and the industry of others is interfered with seriously. One of the most striking illustrations of intemperance in work is supplied by the life of Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican, one of the famous editors of the generation beginning a few years after the Civil War. Mr. Bowles was but eighteen years old when he had his first warning that his system could not stand the strain of the work to which a strong will drove him. His mother used to set a rocking chair for him at the table at meal-time, because, as she said, "Sam has so little time to rest." But the rocking chair was empty for months, when a breakdown sent him South for a long period of recuperation. When he returned home he plunged into work with all his might. "He worked late at night; vacations and holidays were unknown; of recreation and general society he had almost nothing," his biographer says. For years his office hours began before noon and continued until one or two in the morning. Finally the strain became too great, and loss of sight was feared. Still he forced himself to work, and the injury to his brain was begun that was later to cause his death. He would take a bottle of cold tea to the office, that by its use he might aid his will to work when nature said, "Stop!" For a long time his only sleep--and it was sadly broken sleep--was on a lounge in the office, from two to six or seven in the morning. Then he would set to work again. "By his unceasing mental activity he wore himself out," the comment was made on his career. "For the last twenty years of his life his nerves and stomach were in chronic rebellion. Heavy clouds of dyspepsia, sciatica, sleeplessness, exhaustion, came often and staid long." The intemperate worker knew what he was doing. Once he wrote to a friend, "You can't burn the candle at both ends, and make anything by it in the long run; and it is the long pull that you are to rely on, and whereby you are to gain glory." Persistent headaches, "nature's sharp signal that the engine had been overdriven," added to the warning. At last, when he was thirty-seven, he wrote: "My will has carried me for years beyond my mental and physical power; that has been the offending rock. And now, beyond that desirable in keeping my temper, and forcing me up to proper exercise and cheerfulness through light occupation, I mean to call upon it not at all, if I can help it, and to do only what comes freely and spontaneously from the overflow of power and life. This will make me a light reader, a small worker." Well for him if he had kept his resolution. Still he drove himself to work beyond what his body and brain could stand. Then came paralysis. "Nothing is the matter with me but thirty-five years of hard work," he said. At the time of his death he was not fifty-one years old. His friends could not but admire him for strength of will, for achievement in the face of ill health, for triumph, by sheer will-power, over every obstacle except the will that drove him to his death. He accomplished much, but how much more he might have accomplished if he had been temperate in his use of the wonderful powers of mind and body which God had given him! In connection with this glimpse of the life of one who illustrates the disaster brought by the will to be intemperate, it is helpful to think of the life of another American man of letters whose will to be temperate in his treatment of a body weak and frail prolonged life and usefulness. Francis Parkman, the historian, was never a well man after his trip that resulted in the writing of The Oregon Trail. In fact, he was a physical wreck at twenty-five years of age. He could not even write his own name, until he first closed his eyes; he was unable to fix his mind on a subject, except for very brief intervals, and his nervous system was so exhausted that any effort was a burden. However, in spite of this limitation, which became worse, if possible, instead of better, he managed to accomplish an immense amount of the finest literary work by doing what he could and stopping when this was wise. His will to take care of himself was given the mastery of his will to work. For forty-four years after the completion of The Oregon Trail he labored on, preparing history after history. He was seventy years old when he died, leaving behind him achievements that would have been a tremendous task for a man in perfect health. To everyone is given the marvelous equipment of body and brain, as well as the will which makes possible their judicious investment or their prodigal waste in the struggle to make life count. _ |
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