[Sidenote: Exhausted Nerves]
A young engineer who was accustomed to working in a downtown office in a
big city was transferred to a branch office in a small town. In the city
he had been surrounded by the continuous clatter of typewriters and
adding-machines, the noise of the traffic in the street below and the
boom of elevated trains just outside the window. Because these sounds
were steady and relatively constant, the man did not notice them. He
paid no heed, though his work required intense concentration and
uninterrupted thought.
In the small town branch office he was the sole occupant of a little
room looking out upon an uncleared field. Shortly after the engineer’s
arrival the owner of the adjacent land began to clear it. He used
dynamite to blast out the stumps. The explosions of the blasts would
have been lost in the din to which this man had been accustomed in the
city, but breaking in upon a dead silence as they did, they annoyed the
engineer so much that he lost much time trying to pick up the broken
threads of his work every day.
Then, these noisy explosions began to get on his nerves, for he was a
high-strung man. At the end of two weeks he had a nervous breakdown
which was caused by nothing but these periodic disturbances that set his
nerves on edge and shattered his self-control. Fortunately, by the time
he had recovered from his illness, the blasting was finished and he went
on with his work undisturbed.