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As for the industrious idleness which is held to blame for the wrecking of our nervous systems, it was not unknown to an earlier generation. Madame Le Brun assures us that, in her youth, pleasure-loving people would leave Brussels early in the morning, travel all day to Paris, to hear the opera, and travel all night home. “That,” she observes,–as well she may,–“was considered being fond of the opera.” A paragraph in one of Horace Walpole’s letters gives us the record of a day and a night in the life of an English lady,–sixteen hours of “strain” which would put New York to the blush. “I heard the Duchess of Gordon’s journal of last Monday,” he writes to Miss Berry in the spring of 1791. “She first went to hear Handel’s music in the Abbey; she then clambered over the benches, and went to Hastings’s trial in the Hall; after dinner, to the play; then to Lady Lucan’s assembly; after that to Ranelagh, and returned to Mrs. Hobart’s faro-table; gave a ball herself in the evening of that morning, into which she must have got a good way; and set out for Scotland the next day. Hercules could not have accomplished a quarter of her labours in the same space of time.”

Human happiness was not to this gay Gordon a “painless languor”; and if she failed to have nervous prostration–under another name–she was cheated of her dues. Wear-and-tear plus luxury is said to break down the human system more rapidly than wear-and-tear plus want; but perhaps wear-and-tear plus pensive self-consideration is the most destructive agent of all. “Apres tout, c’est un monde passable”; and the Duchess of Gordon was too busy acquainting herself with this fact to count the costs, or even pay the penalty.

One thing is sure,–we cannot live in the world without vexation and without fatigue. We are bidden to avoid both, just as we are bidden to avoid an injudicious meal, a restless night, a close and crowded room, an uncomfortable sensation of any kind,–as if these things were not the small coin of existence. An American doctor who was delicately swathing his nervous patient in cotton wool, explained that, as part of the process, she must be secluded from everything unpleasant. No disturbing news must be told her. No needless contradiction must be offered her. No disagreeable word must be spoken to her. “But doctor,” said the lady, who had long before retired with her nerves from all lively contact with realities, “who is there that would dream of saying anything disagreeable to me?” “Madam,” retorted the physician, irritated for once into unprofessional candour, “have you then no family?”

There is a bracing quality about family criticism, if we are strong enough to bear its veracities. What makes it so useful is that it recognizes existing conditions. All the well-meant wisdom of the “Don’t Worry” books is based upon immunity from common sensations and from everyday experience. We must–unless we are insensate–take our share of worry along with our share of mishaps. All the kindly counsellors who, in scientific journals, entreat us to keep on tap “a vivid hope, a cheerful resolve, an absorbing interest,” by way of nerve-tonic, forget that these remedies do not grow under glass. They are hardy plants, springing naturally in eager and animated natures. Artificial remedies might be efficacious in an artificial world. In a real world, the best we can do is to meet the plagues of life as Dick Turpin met the hangman’s noose, “with manly resignation, though with considerable disgust.” Moreover, disagreeable things are often very stimulating. A visit to some beautiful little rural almshouses in England convinced me that what kept the old inmates alert and in love with life was, not the charm of their bright-coloured gardens, nor the comfort of their cottage hearths, but the vital jealousies and animosities which pricked their sluggish blood to tingling.