THE AMERICAN ANGLER. 



Vol. 26. 



FEBRUARY, 1896. 



Xo. 2. 



THE GRIND OF BUSINESS DRUDGERY AND ITS PANACEA. 



BY J. T. HOPKINS. 



Meeting an acquaintance who had 

 just returned from an extended visit 

 abroad — a native German — I asked him 

 whether he felt any desire to go back 

 and spend his remaining days perma- 

 nently as a citizen of the Fatherland. 

 "Yes." he replied, "but for hindrances 

 — certain business shackles from which 

 I can not readily disengage myself — I 

 should again take up my habitation in 

 the older country where I was born, for 

 one reason, if no other, that I could live 

 there more quietly, with less of that 

 wearing friction of body and mind. 



" Men there," he continued, " do not 

 struggle as we do here in America for 

 the dollar that must be unceasingly 

 multiplied without limit, although none 

 can more fully appreciate its value. As 

 a rule, the people of Germany are in 

 position to live independently coiufort- 

 able, having and enjoying more leisure 

 and being satisfied with less of those 

 material things which are needful mere- 

 ly m the imagination. They have a 

 broader understanding of what true 

 happiness is, and from their habits of 

 living, following closel}^ upon lines of 

 prudence as laid down by the ancestor, 

 they have learned to know that in the 

 beaten track of moderation is to be found 

 all that is most conducive to their en- 

 joyment and personal comfort." 



As far as they go, the remarks of my 

 German friend are quoted for the pur- 



pose of showing, by contrast, how sadly 

 deficient we are as a people in the 

 proper conception of the value of 

 recreation, and how slow to indulge the 



inclination, if indeed we have it. The 



• 



one rule by which we appear to be 

 guided is that there can be no resting 

 place in the race for gain. As though 

 Mammon had decreed that in our hum- 

 drum lives no day should be spared 

 away from his service, and that as blind 

 followers, having no alternative, we 

 must obey. To tread the press unceas- 

 ingly that there shall be no diminution 

 of the flow of wine ; to toil, and think, 

 and fret. To undergo those pitying 

 processes by which our stay upon earth 

 — which nature may intend shall be 

 long and pleasant — must be measurably 

 shortened and made a sojourn of misery. 



Is it not incomprehensible that as 

 rational beings we can not be led to see 

 the folly of such a course ? The pity is 

 that we certainly do not, and the typi- 

 cal American, above all other mortals, 

 is one who seems determined to hasten 

 the occupancy of that little bit of allotted 

 ground in God's acre before his time ; 

 deliberately to kill himself by over- 

 exertion, deaf to the knowledge that be- 

 tween idleness and constant, exhausting 

 labor there is a golden mean which it is 

 his privilege to enjoy if only he would. 



I had spent the better part of that Oc- 

 tober day in seeking out one or more 



