ost injuriously the organic
balance. The African negro has long been accustomed to agricultural toil
and to certain simple arts in his own country. Transported to the West
Indies and the United States, he found life no harder than of old, if
not, indeed, easier. He had abundant food, protection, security, a kind
of labour for which he was well adapted. Instead of dying out,
therefore, he was fruitful, and multiplied, and replenished the earth
amazingly. But the Red Indian, caught blatant in the hunting stage,
refused to be tamed, and could not swallow civilisation. He pined and
dwined and decreased in his "reservations." The change was too great,
too abrupt, too brusque for him. The papoose before long became an
extinct animal.

Is not the same thing true of the middle class of England? Civilisation
and its works have come too quickly upon us. The strain and stress of
correlating and co-ordinating the world we live in are getting too much
for us. Railways, telegraphs, the penny post, the special edition, have
played havoc at last with our nervous systems. We are always on the
stretch, rushing and tearing perpetually. We bolt our breakfasts; we
catch the train or 'bus by the skin of our teeth, to rattle us into the
City; we run down to Scotland or over to Paris on business; we lunch in
London and dine in Glasgow, Belfast, or Calcutta. (Excuse imagination.)
The tape clicks perpetually in our ears the last quotation in Eries; the
telephone rings us up at inconvenient moments. Something is always
happening somewhere to disturb our equanimity; we tear open the _Times_
with feverish haste, to learn that Kimberleys or Jabez Balfour have
fallen, that Matabeleland has been painted red, that shares have gone
up, or gone down, or evaporated. Life is one turmoil of excitement and
bustle. Financially, 'tis a series of dissolving views; personally 'tis
a rush; socially, 'tis a mosaic of deftly-fitted engagements. Drop out
one piece, and you can never replace it. You are full next week from
Monday to Saturday--business all day, what calls itself pleasure (save
the mark!) all evening. Poor old Leisure is dead. We hurry and scurry
and flurry eternally. One whirl of work from morning till night: then
dress and dine: one whirl of excitement from night till morning. A snap
of troubled sleep, and again _da capo_. Not an hour, not a minute, we
can call our own. A wire from a patient ill abed in Warwickshire! A wire
from a client hard hit in