Commenting on the well-known dislike of the late Russell Sage
for vacations, _Forest and Stream_ says: “An office dig
who digs voluntarily is as uneasy and as unhappy on a holiday
as were those Pennsylvania mine mules which, on the occasion of
the coal strike, were for the first time in many years lifted
to the surface and turned out into the green fields in the
sunlight. The poor creatures were in actual pain until they got
back again into the darkness and the close atmosphere in the
mine. The trouble with them was, that their whole nature as
surface-dwellers had been supplanted by the attributes common to
moles and the blind fishes of Mammoth Cave, and they could not
stand in the open air and the light. So with a human being under
the obsession of inordinate money-getting. The loss of time is
only one component of the restlessness which attacks him after
he gets away from the rut. His nature has become so molded and
restricted to the ruling passion that he has lost capacity for
finding employment in other things, least of all in vacation
surroundings and vacation ways.”
(2792)