OUR BEAUTIFUL ISLE OF THE SEA. 



BY JOHN DE MORGAN. 



WE LIVE IN AN AGE of energetic activity. Men are now en- 

 gaged in an unceasing, never-ending struggle for position, wealth 

 or power. 



A century ago everything was slower, men lived quieter lives, en- 

 joyed the recreations of their homes, and never allowed the cares of 

 business to absorb the whole of their existence. The invention of 

 labor-saving machinery and the subjugation of steam and electricity 

 to the service of man have produced such changes that the slow, 

 plodding ways of the past have had to make way and give place for 

 the rush and hurry of the present. Men work now as they never 

 worked before ; life has assumed new aspects, and the latent energy 

 in human nature has been brought to the front. 



It has become self-evident that only the fittest will survive, and 

 each has been called on to show his fitness or be crushed into 

 oblivion. 



We experience more friction in a day than our fathers endured in 

 a month. But all this activity leads to a wasting of the tissues of 

 the brain and body and produces new and prolific diseases, a century 

 ago unknown. 



Life has degenerated into a struggle for the "almighty dollar," and 

 we are apt to ask 



"What Is worth in anything 

 But so much money as 'twill bring V 

 Or what but riches ts there known, 

 Which man can solely call his own ? " 



So thoroughly does this grasping for money prevail, that men are 

 compelled to follow the crowd, or be pushed on one side unable even 

 to retain a foothold. 



In our large cities the strain is so great that business men become 

 practically "monomaniacs," knowing nothing beyond business in 

 which alone they "live and move and have their being." Their lives are 

 mostly spent amid incessant noises, the jingling of car bells, the vi- 



