king have been deprived of air, sun,
light, exercise, sleep, proper food at the proper time, opportunity to
live and work hygienically. Fortunately for human progress, doing
nothing brings ailments of its own and has none of the compensations of
work. As the stomach deprived of substantial food craves unnatural
food,--sweets, stimulants,--so the mind deprived of substantial,
regular diet of wholesome work turns to unwholesome, petty, fantastic,
suspicious, unhappy thoughts. This state of mind, combined with the
lack of bodily exercise that generally accompanies it, reacts
unfavorably on physical health. An editor has aptly termed the
do-nothing condition as a self-inflicted confinement:

A great deal of the misery and wretchedness among young men that
inherit great fortunes is caused by the fact that they are
practically in jail. They have nothing to do but eat, drink, and
enjoy themselves, and they cannot understand why their lives are
dull.

We have had the owner of a great railroad system pathetically
telling the public that he is unhappy. That is undoubtedly true,
because with all his race horses, and his yachts, and all the
things that he imagines to be pleasures, he is not really doing
anything.

If he were running one little railroad station up the road,
handling the freight, fussing about dispatches, living above the
railroad station in two rooms, and buying shoes in a neighboring
village for fifteen children he would be busy and happy.

But he cannot be happy because he is in prison,--in a prison of
money, a prison that is honorable because it gives him everything
that he wants, and he wants nothing.

A New York newspaper that circulates among the working classes where
young men and women are inclined to associate health and happiness with
doing nothing recently gave two columns to "Dandy Jim," the richest dog
in the world. Dandy Jim's mistress left him a ten-thousand-dollar
legacy. During his lifetime he wore diamonds. Every day he ate candy
that cost eighty cents a pound. The coachman took him driving in the
park sunny afternoons. He had no cares and nothing to work for. His
food came without effort. He had fatty degeneration of the vital
organs. He was pampered, coddled, and killed thereby. Thousands of men
and women drag out lives of unhappiness for themselves and others
because, like Dandy Jim, they have nothing to work for, are pampered,
coddled victims of fatty de