It is possible to drink with safety in England quantities of wine which here would be disagreeable in their first effect and perilous in their ultimate results.  The Cuban who takes coffee enormously at home, and smokes endlessly, can do here neither the one nor the other to the same degree.  And so also the amount of excitation from work which the brain will bear varies exceedingly with variations of climatic influences.

We are all of us familiar with the fact that physical work is more or less exhausting in different climates, and as I am dealing, or about to deal, with the work of business men, which involves a certain share of corporal exertion, as well as with that of mere scholars, I must ask leave to digress, in order to show that in this part of the country at least the work of the body probably occasions more strain than in Europe, and is followed by greater sense of fatigue.

The question is certainly a large one, and should include a consideration of matters connected with food and stimulants, on which I can but touch.  I have carefully questioned a number of master-mechanics who employ both foreigners and native Americans, and I am assured that the British workman finds labor more trying here than at home; while perhaps the eight-hour movement may be looked upon as an instinctive expression of the main fact as regards our working class in general.

A distinguished English scholar informs me that since he has resided among us the same complaints, as to the depressing effects of physical labor in America, have come to him from skilled English mechanics.  What share change of diet and the like may have in the matter I have not space to discuss.[1]

[Footnote 1:  The new emigrant suffers in a high degree from the same evils as to cookery which affect only less severely the mass of our people, and this, no doubt, helps to enfeeble him.  The frying-pan has, I fear, a better right to be called our national emblem than the eagle, and I grieve to say it reigns supreme west of the Alleghanies.  I well remember that a party of friends about to camp out were unable to buy a gridiron in two Western towns, each numbering over four thousand eaters of fried meats.]

Although, from what I have seen, I should judge that overtasked men of science are especially liable to the trouble which I have called cerebral exhaustion, all classes of men who use the brain severely, and who have also—­and this is important—­seasons of excessive anxiety or of grave responsibility, are subject to the same form of disease; and this I presume is why we meet with numerous instances of nervous exhaustion among merchants and manufacturers.  The lawyer and clergyman offer examples, but I do not remember to have seen many bad cases among physicians.  Dismissing the easy jest which the latter statement will surely suggest, the reason for this we may presently encounter.

My note-books seem to show that manufacturers and certain classes of railway officials are the most liable to suffer from neural exhaustion.  Next to these come merchants in general, brokers, etc.; then less frequently clergymen; still less often lawyers; and more rarely doctors; while distressing cases are apt to occur among the overschooled young of both sexes.