, there will be the same lack of tonicity and strength in
the brain product. Some men often do a vast amount of literary work in
entirely different lines during their spare hours.

Cessation of brain activity does not necessarily constitute brain rest,
as most great thinkers know. The men who accomplish the most
brain-work, sooner or later--usually later, unfortunately--learn to
give rest to one set of faculties and use another, as interest begins
to flag and a sense of weariness comes. In this way they have been
enabled to astonish the world by their mental achievements, which is
very largely a matter of skill in exercising alternate sets of
faculties, allowing rest to some while giving healthy exercise to
others. The continual use of one set of faculties by an ambitious
worker will soon bring him to grief. No set of brain cells can
possibly set free more brain force in the combustion of thought than is
stored up in them. The tired brain must have rest, or nervous
exhaustion, brain fever, or even softening of the brain is liable to
follow.

As a rule, physical vigor is the condition of a great career. What
would Gladstone have accomplished with a weak, puny physique? He
addresses an audience at Corfu in Greek, and another at Florence in
Italian. A little later he converses at ease with Bismarck in German,
or talks fluent French in Paris, or piles up argument on argument in
English for hours in Parliament. There are families that have
"clutched success and kept it through generations from the simple fact
of a splendid physical organization handed down from one generation to
another."

[Illustration: William Ewart Gladstone]

All occupations that enervate, paralyze, or destroy body or soul should
be avoided. Our manufacturing interests too often give little thought
to the employed; the article to be made is generally the only object
considered. They do not care if a man spends the whole of his life
upon the head of a pin, or in making a screw in a watch factory. They
take no notice of the occupations that ruin, or the phosphorus, the
dust, the arsenic that destroys the health, that shortens the lives of
many workers; of the cramped condition of the body which creates
deformity.

The moment we compel those we employ to do work that demoralizes them
or does not tend to elevate or lift them, we are forcing them into
service worse than useless. "If we induce painters to work in fading
colors, or architec