XII. This Strenuous Age

 Something is happening, I regret to find, to the world in which we used to live. The poor old thing is being “speeded up.” There is “efficiency” in the air. Offices open at eight o’clock. Millionaires lunch on a baked apple. Bankers eat practically nothing. A college president has declared that there are more foot pounds of energy in a glass of peptonized milk than in—something else, I forget what. All this is very fine. Yet somehow I feel out of it.

 

My friends are failing me. They won’t sit up after midnight. They have taken to sleeping out of doors, on porches and pergolas. Some, I understand, merely roost on plain wooden bars. They rise early. They take deep breathing. They bathe in ice water. They are no good.

 

This change I am sure, is excellent. It is, I am certain, just as it ought to be. I am merely saying, quietly and humbly², that I am not in it. I am being left behind. Take, for example, the case of alcohol. That, at least, is what it is called now. There were days when we called it Bourbon whisky and Tom Gin, and when the very name of it breathed romance. That time is past.

 

The poor stuff is now called alcohol, and none so low that he has a good word for it. Quite right, I am certain. I don’t defend it. Alcohol, they are saying to-day, if taken in sufficient quantities, tears all the outer coating off the diaphragm. It leaves the epigastric tissue, so I am informed, a useless wreck³.

 

This I don’t deny. It gets, they tell me, into the brain. I don’t dispute it. It turns the prosencephalon into mere¹ punk. I know it. I’ve felt it doing it. They tell me—and I believe it—that after even one glass of alcohol, or shall we say Scotch⁴ whisky and soda⁵, a man’s working power is lowered by twenty per cent. This is a dreadful thing. After three glasses, so it is held, his capacity for sustained rigid⁶ thought is cut in two. And after about six glasses the man’s working power is reduced by at least a hundred per cent. He merely sits there—in his arm-chair, at his club let us say—with all power, even all desire to work gone out of him, not thinking rigidly⁷, not sustaining his thought, a mere shapeless chunk⁸ of geniality⁹, half hidden in the blue smoke of his cigar.

 

Very dreadful, not a doubt. Alcohol is doomed¹⁰; it is going it is gone. Yet when I think of a hot Scotch on a winter evening, or a Tom Collins on a summer morning, or a gin Rickey beside a tennis-court, or a stein of beer on a bench beside a bowling-green—I wish somehow that we could prohibit the use of alcohol and merely drink beer and whisky and gin as we used to. But these things, it appears, interfere¹¹ with work. They have got to go.

 

But turn to the broader and simpler question of work itself. In my time one hated it. It was viewed as the natural enemy of man. Now the world has fallen in love with it. My friends, I find, take their deep breathing and their porch sleeping because it makes them work better. They go for a week’s vacation in Virginia not for its own sake, but because they say they can work better when they get back. I know a man who wears very loose boots because he can work better in them: and another who wears only soft shirts because he can work better in a soft shirt. There are plenty of men now who would wear dog-harness if they thought they could work more in it. I know another man who walks away out into the country every Sunday: not that he likes the country—he wouldn’t recognize a bumble bee if he saw it—but he claims that if he walks on Sunday his head is as clear as a bell for work on Monday.

 

Against work itself, I say nothing. But I sometimes wonder if I stand alone in this thing. Am I the only person left who hates it?

 

Nor is work all. Take food. I admit, here and now, that the lunch I like best—I mean for an ordinary plain lunch, not a party—is a beef steak about one foot square and two inches thick. Can I work on it? No, I can’t, but I can work in spite of it. That is as much as one used to ask, twenty-five years ago.

 

Yet now I find that all my friends boast ostentatiously about the meagre lunch they eat. One tells me that he finds a glass of milk and a prune¹² is quite as much as he cares to take. Another says that a dry biscuit and a glass of water is all that his brain will stand. One lunches on the white of an egg. Another eats merely the yolk¹³. I have only two friends left who can eat a whole egg at a time.

 

I understand that the fear of these men is that if they eat more than an egg or a biscuit they will feel heavy after lunch. Why they object to feeling heavy, I do not know. Personally, I enjoy it. I like nothing better than to sit round after a heavy lunch with half a dozen heavy friends, smoking heavy cigars. I am well aware that that is wicked. I merely confess the fact. I do not palliate it.

 

Nor is food all, nor drink, nor work, nor open air. There has spread abroad along with the so-called physical efficiency a perfect passion for information. Somehow if a man’s stomach is empty and his head clear as a bell, and if he won’t drink and won’t smoke, he reaches out for information. He wants facts. He reads the newspapers all though, instead of only reading the headings. He clamours for articles filled with statistics about illiteracy¹⁴ and alien immigration and the number of battleships in the Japanese navy.

 

I know quite a lot of men who have actually bought the new Encyclopaedia¹⁵ Britannica. What is more, they read the thing. They sit in their apartments at night with a glass of water at their elbow reading the encyclopaedia. They say that it is literally¹⁶ filled with facts. Other men spend their time reading the Statistical¹⁷ Abstract of the United States (they say the figures in it are great) and the Acts of Congress, and the list of Presidents since Washington (or was it Washington?).

 

Spending their evenings thus, and topping it off with a cold baked apple, and sleeping out in the snow, they go to work in the morning, so they tell me, with a positive sense of exhilaration. I have no doubt that they do. But, for me, I confess that once and for all I am out of it. I am left behind.

 

Add to it all such rising dangers as total prohibition¹⁸, and the female franchise¹⁹, the daylight saving, and eugenic²⁰ marriage, together with proportional representation, the initiative and the referendum, and the duty of the citizen to take an intelligent interest in politics—and I admit that I shall not be sorry to go away from here.

 

But before I do go, I have one hope. I understand that down in Hayti things are very different. Bull fights, cock fights, dog fights, are openly permitted. Business never begins till eleven in the morning. Everybody sleeps after lunch, and the bars remain open all night. Marriage is but a casual relation. In fact, the general condition of morality, so they tell me, is lower in Hayti than it has been anywhere since the time of Nero. Me for Hayti.

1 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

2 humbly   

adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地

参考例句：

• We humbly beg Your Majesty to show mercy. 我们恳请陛下发发慈悲。
• "You must be right, Sir,'said John humbly. “你一定是对的，先生，”约翰恭顺地说道。

3 wreck   

n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难

参考例句：

• Weather may have been a factor in the wreck.天气可能是造成这次失事的原因之一。
• No one can wreck the friendship between us.没有人能够破坏我们之间的友谊。

4 scotch   

n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的

参考例句：

• Facts will eventually scotch these rumours.这种谣言在事实面前将不攻自破。
• Italy was full of fine views and virtually empty of Scotch whiskey.意大利多的是美景，真正缺的是苏格兰威士忌。

5 soda   

n.苏打水；汽水

参考例句：

• She doesn't enjoy drinking chocolate soda.她不喜欢喝巧克力汽水。
• I will freshen your drink with more soda and ice cubes.我给你的饮料重加一些苏打水和冰块。

6 rigid   

adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的

参考例句：

• She became as rigid as adamant.她变得如顽石般的固执。
• The examination was so rigid that nearly all aspirants were ruled out.考试很严，几乎所有的考生都被淘汰了。

7 rigidly   

adv.刻板地，僵化地

参考例句：

• Life today is rigidly compartmentalized into work and leisure. 当今的生活被严格划分为工作和休闲两部分。
• The curriculum is rigidly prescribed from an early age. 自儿童时起即已开始有严格的课程设置。

8 chunk   

n.厚片，大块，相当大的部分（数量）

参考例句：

• They had to be careful of floating chunks of ice.他们必须当心大块浮冰。
• The company owns a chunk of farmland near Gatwick Airport.该公司拥有盖特威克机场周边的大片农田。

9 geniality   

n.和蔼，诚恳；愉快

参考例句：

• They said he is a pitiless,cold-blooded fellow,with no geniality in him.他们说他是个毫无怜悯心、一点也不和蔼的冷血动物。
• Not a shade was there of anything save geniality and kindness.他的眼神里只显出愉快与和气，看不出一丝邪意。

10 doomed   

命定的

参考例句：

• The court doomed the accused to a long term of imprisonment. 法庭判处被告长期监禁。
• A country ruled by an iron hand is doomed to suffer. 被铁腕人物统治的国家定会遭受不幸的。

11 interfere   

v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰

参考例句：

• If we interfere, it may do more harm than good.如果我们干预的话，可能弊多利少。
• When others interfere in the affair,it always makes troubles. 别人一卷入这一事件，棘手的事情就来了。

12 prune   

n.酶干；vt.修剪，砍掉，削减；vi.删除

参考例句：

• Will you prune away the unnecessary adjectives in the passage?把这段文字中不必要的形容词删去好吗？
• It is our job to prune the side branches of these trees.我们的工作就是修剪这些树的侧枝。

13 yolk   

n.蛋黄，卵黄

参考例句：

• This dish would be more delicious with some yolk powder.加点蛋黄粉，这道菜就会更好吃。
• Egg yolk serves as the emulsifying agent in salad dressing.在色拉调味时，蛋黄能作为乳化剂。

14 illiteracy   

n.文盲

参考例句：

• It is encouraging to read that illiteracy is declining.从读报中了解文盲情况正在好转，这是令人鼓舞的。
• We must do away with illiteracy.我们必须扫除文盲。

15 encyclopaedia   

n.百科全书

参考例句：

• An encyclopaedia contains a lot of knowledge.百科全书包含很多知识。
• This is an encyclopaedia of philosophy.这是本哲学百科全书。

16 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

17 statistical   

adj.统计的，统计学的

参考例句：

• He showed the price fluctuations in a statistical table.他用统计表显示价格的波动。
• They're making detailed statistical analysis.他们正在做具体的统计分析。

18 prohibition   

n.禁止；禁令，禁律

参考例句：

• The prohibition against drunken driving will save many lives.禁止酒后开车将会减少许多死亡事故。
• They voted in favour of the prohibition of smoking in public areas.他们投票赞成禁止在公共场所吸烟。

19 franchise   

n.特许，特权，专营权，特许权

参考例句：

• Catering in the schools is run on a franchise basis.学校餐饮服务以特许权经营。
• The United States granted the franchise to women in 1920.美国于1920年给妇女以参政权。

20 eugenic   

adj.优生的

参考例句：

• In China,each couple is required to carry out a eugenic plan strictly.中国要求每对夫妇都要严格执行优生计划。
• He had eugenic solutions for the problem.他对于这个问题有优生学的解决方案。