this is
called, not murder, but education. Those who survive it, having been
taught that an American youth should never be satisfied with the
present, that _excelsior_ should be the only motto, and that all
pleasure should be denied, health sacrificed, and time unremittingly
devoted to win the eminence struggled for, rush into the business of
life before their time. They win wrinkles before they attain manhood,
and graves before the wild ambition thus kindled and inflamed can
receive its first chaplet. All our literature teaches this unquiet and
discontented spirit as to the present, and this rash and impatient
determination to achieve immediate success. Now, this is a peculiarity
of our country, the land of all others which should cherish a
disposition to be gratefully contented with the unequaled blessings
with which it is endowed. There is no necessity for this forcing
system to expand properly and in due time the real energies of our
people. The truly great in every walk of science and literature have
been generally patient students, and have lived, in tranquillity, to a
good old age. The impatient ambition which scourges our people on to
the farthest stretch of their energies in any adopted pursuit, is
inconsistent with the permanent and healthful character of a race. It
made Rome great; but it left her people, as a race, so physically
exhausted that the weakest tribes of the North dictated to her the
terms of her degradation. The physical character of a nation moulds
its intellectual nature, and shapes its destinies. The study of health
is therefore the great study, and it will be found in all things
accordant with those loftier truths taught by the Great Physician.
Strangers of intelligence often remark that, with unbounded means of
happiness, affluence for every reasonable want, security against every
danger, and the high prerogatives of conscious and elevated freedom,
we are still the most unhappy of the sons of Adam. They assert that we
grow old before our time; are restless, excitable, and ever worrying
for an attainment, in reference to some ruling passion beyond our
reach. Comfort, health, calmness, and content, are sacrificed to grasp
at something more. Our cheeks grow pale, our brows wrinkled, our
hearts clouded, from a settled, taught, established habit of
discontent with any position that is not the highest. There is much of
truth in all this, as every one who treads our crowded marts and finds
each ma