There are times when the real test of a worker's courage is not his
readiness to work but his will to curb the temptation to be intemperate
in work.
When the word "intemperance" is mentioned most people think at once of
strong drink; many people are unwilling to think of anything but strong
drink. As if where there is no temptation to drink there can be no
temptation to intemperance!
Paul had a different idea. When he wrote to the Corinthians, "Every man
that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things," he must have
had in mind scores of different ways in which intemperance endangers
success.
If people were to make a list of some of the aspects of intemperance
that are characteristic of modern life, it is quite likely that a large
proportion would omit one of the most serious of all--the intemperance
of the man who lives to work, who drives himself to work, who is never
happy unless he is working, who makes himself and others unhappy because
he labors too long, and too persistently, perhaps with the result that
his own promising career is wrecked and the industry of others is
interfered with seriously.
One of the most striking illustrations of intemperance in work is
supplied by the life of Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield,
Massachusetts, _Republican_, one of the famous editors of the generation
beginning a few years after the Civil War.
Mr. Bowles was but eighteen years old when he had his first warning that
his system could not stand the strain of the work to which a strong will
drove him. His mother used to set a rocking chair for him at the table
at meal-time, because, as she said, "Sam has so little time to rest."
But the rocking chair was empty for months, when a breakdown sent him
South for a long period of recuperation.
When he returned home he plunged into work with all his might. "He
worked late at night; vacations and holidays were unknown; of recreation
and general society he had almost nothing," his biographer says. For
years his office hours began before noon and continued until one or two
in the morning. Finally the strain became too great, and loss of sight
was feared. Still he forced himself to work, and the injury to his brain
was begun that was later to cause his death. He would take a bottle of
cold tea to the office, that by its use he might aid his will to work
when nature said, "Stop!" For a long time his only sleep--and it was
sadly broken sleep--was on a lounge in the office, from two to six or
seven in the morning. Then he would set to work again. "By his unceasing
mental activity he wore himself out," the comment was made on his
career. "For the last twenty years of his life his nerves and stomach
were in chronic rebellion. Heavy clouds of dyspepsia, sciatica,
sleeplessness, exhaustion, came often and staid long."
The intemperate worker knew what he was doing. Once he wrote to a
friend, "You can't burn the candle at both ends, and make anything by it
in the long run; and it is the long pull that you are to rely on, and
whereby you are to gain glory." Persistent headaches, "nature's sharp
signal that the engine had been overdriven," added to the warning. At
last, when he was thirty-seven, he wrote: "My will has carried me for
years beyond my mental and physical power; that has been the offending
rock. And now, beyond that desirable in keeping my temper, and forcing
me up to proper exercise and cheerfulness through light occupation, I
mean to call upon it not at all, if I can help it, and to do only what
comes freely and spontaneously from the overflow of power and life. This
will make me a light reader, a small worker."
Well for him if he had kept his resolution. Still he drove himself to
work beyond what his body and brain could stand. Then came paralysis.
"Nothing is the matter with me but thirty-five years of hard work," he
said. At the time of his death he was not fifty-one years old.
His friends could not but admire him for strength of will, for
achievement in the face of ill health, for triumph, by sheer will-power,
over every obstacle except the will that drove him to his death. He
accomplished much, but how much more he might have accomplished if he
had been temperate in his use of the wonderful powers of mind and body
which God had given him!
In connection with this glimpse of the life of one who illustrates the
disaster brought by the will to be intemperate, it is helpful to think
of the life of another American man of letters whose will to be
temperate in his treatment of a body weak and frail prolonged life and
usefulness.
Francis Parkman, the historian, was never a well man after his trip
that resulted in the writing of _The Oregon Trail_. In fact, he was a
physical wreck at twenty-five years of age. He could not even write his
own name, until he first closed his eyes; he was unable to fix his mind
on a subject, except for very brief intervals, and his nervous system
was so exhausted that any effort was a burden. However, in spite of this
limitation, which became worse, if possible, instead of better, he
managed to accomplish an immense amount of the finest literary work by
doing what he could and stopping when this was wise. His will to take
care of himself was given the mastery of his will to work. For
forty-four years after the completion of _The Oregon Trail_ he labored
on, preparing history after history. He was seventy years old when he
died, leaving behind him achievements that would have been a tremendous
task for a man in perfect health.
To everyone is given the marvelous equipment of body and brain, as well
as the will which makes possible their judicious investment or their
prodigal waste in the struggle to make life count.