788 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a local repute for his excellence. The moment he enters on this resolve, 

 however, he loses recreation. He sets himself to a new work, be it 

 mental or physical ; his mind becomes an emporium for the produce of 

 that one particular culture, and he is in respect to that not far removed 

 from a monomaniac. From the day that he is completely enamored of 

 the special pursuit it is little indeed that he is good for out of it in 

 hours apart from the common vocation of his life. He becomes fretful 

 if for a day he be deprived of his peculiar gratification ; irritable if he 

 joins with others in it who are not so skillful as himself; envious if he 

 meets with a rival who is better at it than himself ; and often actually 

 sleepless in thinking and brooding over some event or events that have 

 been connected with the previous play or venture. 



If the time at my disposal admitted the introduction of detailed 

 illustration of the facts here referred to, I could supply from experience 

 instance upon instance. I have seen an amateur chess-plaj'er so infat- 

 uated with the game, which he originally sat down to as a relaxation, 

 that he became for months a victim of insomnia. He carried the whole 

 chess-board, set out in various difficult problems, in his brain, if I may 

 use such a simile, studied moves on going to sleep, dreamed of them, 

 woke with the solution solved, was sick and feeble and irritable all next 

 day, followed his usual occupation with languid ability and interest, 

 resumed his play at night with excited but not recruited determination, 

 got more and more sleepless, and at last failed to sleep altogether. I 

 have known more than one similar illustration in whist-players and in 

 great billiard-players, and have seen the results of these so-called recrea- 

 tions end in the most sad physical disaster, when the pursuit of them 

 has been made a matter of living importance, and when the player has 

 ever had in his mind that pitiful 7/: "If I had done this or that — if I 

 had made that move on the board — if I had played that card — if I had 

 made that stroke, how would the case have been ? " It matters little 

 what the answer to the question may be — whether it be that by such a 

 move, card, or stroke, the game would have been lost or won ; the per- 

 plexing doubt is there to annoy, and it keeps up an irritation which 

 imperceptibly wears out the animal powers and does permanent injury 

 to life. You see men while still they are actually young grow rapidly 

 like old men under this supposed recreative strain. They grow prema- 

 turely careworn, prematurely gray, prematurely fixed in idea and ob- 

 stinate in idea, angry at trifles, bafiled by trifles, and, in a word, young 

 senilities. 



In this busy city, in the great places of business near to which we 

 noAV are, there are hundreds — may I not extend the calculation and say 

 thousands ? — of men who, in pursuit of the recreative pleasures I have 

 specified, or of others similar in their results, are wearing themselves 

 out twice as fast — and more than twice — as they are by the legitimate 

 labor to which they have to apply themselves that they may earn their 

 daily bread. It is the fact ; and the observant physician, as he listens 



