Surely people are far more _nervous_ now than they used to be some
generations back. The mental cultivation and the mental wear which we
have to go through tends to make that strange and inexplicable portion of
our physical construction a very great deal too sensitive for the work
and trial of daily life. A few days ago I drove a friend who had been
paying us a visit over to our railway station. He is a man of fifty, a
remarkably able and accomplished man. Before the train started, the
guard came round to look at the tickets. My friend could not find his;
he searched his pockets everywhere, and although the entire evil
consequence, had the ticket not turned up, could not possibly have been
more than the payment a second time of four or five shillings, he got
into a nervous tremor painful to see. He shook from head to foot; his
hand trembled so that he could not prosecute his search rightly, and
finally he found the missing ticket in a pocket which he had already
searched half-a-dozen times. Now contrast the condition of this
highly-civilized man, thrown into a painful flurry and confusion at the
demand of a railway ticket, with the impassive coolness of a savage, who
would not move a muscle if you hacked him in pieces.
—_Fraser’s Magazine_.