MIGHTY ACTORS The strenuous life was lived before it was named. Highpressure characterizes all American activity. We work, we play, we think, we travel, we rest, and even worship at a tremendous rate of speed. We do not know how to go slow. If accused of living too fast, we acknowledge the fact and then go on living faster. Everybody acts as if life depends on the action, whether it be to fill a hurry-up business order or to go on a vacation. The truth is that we love activity and hard work. We want to be occupied and make it pay. When it pays well, we are restless until it pays better. Nothing satisfies us, not even satisfaction itself. We create new demands as fast as we meet them. It is a strenuous age. Old-time gentlemen and ladies doted on the delights of leisure. Americans sing, "Blessed be work!" They are happiest who put most zest into life and sweat and fret under all sorts of obligations. To be beautifully idle is to know the quintessence of ennui and despondency. In factory and field, office and store, shop and station, all pulses throb with anticipation, all nerves tingle at high tension, all brains turn and twist at high pressure, and all muscles move as rapidly as authority or sense of duty can compel them. We are a busy lot, men, women, and children, in this broad and marvelously complex arena of human life. If it be said that money, not moral tone, is our spurring motive, we shall have to acknowledge the soft impeachment, or much of it, and then pitch in and make more money, leaving morals to be worked out when we get rich, or die. We are bound to be thoroughly used up before we die, and most of us want to live about ten lives before we are used up. If any man puts his whole force, the mass of his character, mind, heart, and soul into what he says and does, that man is the average American. SWIFT THINKING How fast can a man think? It depends upon the man. One of the swiftest thinkers that ever lived was Jonathan Swift, of London. Swift's brain was a live wire in every coil and twist, and thoughts flew from it in bunches like pellets fired from a repeating shot-gun. One day he was cut with Pope, the poet, and both agreed to note down the thoughts that came to them on the spot just as a fowler bags his game on the wing. Here are a few of Swift's mental shots: "Men of great valor are sometimes cowards to their wives." "Men will not take warning. How can they be expected to take advice?" 'Elephants are always drawn smaller than life, fleas larger.” "In weeding out prejudice, some men eradicate their own virtue and religion." "Time is the one preacher that compels people to heed what they have long vainly heard." "The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the false opinions and follies of the former part." And thus Swift went on pouring out ideas enough to fill a book. His readiness in composing was freakish. "He could write well on a broomstick." Most of his thoughts were vigorous, resembling "groans wrung from a strong man by torture." He was witty in conversation, though sarcastic. When he and Addison got together "neither one wished for a third friend." In the prime of his manhood he was a good-looking fellow, even if he did wear a gown and periwig. His supreme fault was hopeless pessimism. He needed the cheer and comfort of a wife and home. Near the close of his seventy-eight years, he became the |