Happiness that impairs health seldom pays. Where it is a question of useful work done at the expense of our fatigue, there may be more question; normally such sacrifices are undesirable; but what seems over fatigue may not really be so, and the earnest man will err on this side rather than run risk of pusillanimous shirking. Moreover, some work practically requires an over effort for its accomplishment; and no man of mettle will begrudge his very life-blood when necessary. Overwork is "the last infirmity of noble minds." Yet when not really necessary, it must be ranked as a sin, and not too generously condoned. The intense competition of modern industry, the complexity of our economic machinery, the colossal accumulation of facts which must be mastered for success, bring heavy pressure to bear upon those who have their way to make in the world. The pace is fast, and many there are that die or break from overstrain when at the height of their usefulness. Such, overpressure does not pay; it means that less work will in the end get done. When we consider also the moral dangers it involves, the glumness or irritability of taut nerves, the unhealthy tension that demands strong excitements and does not know how to rest or enjoy quiet and restorative pleasures; when we consider the broken men and women that have to be taken care of, the widows and children of the workers who have died before their time, the children perhaps weakened for life because of the tired condition of their parents at birth; when we consider the number of defective children born to such overworked parents, we realize that it is not primarily a question of enjoying life more or less, it is a matter of grave economic and moral import. [Footnote: Cf. M. G. Schlapp, in the Outlook, vol. 100, p. 782.] Whether we actually work harder, on the whole, than our forebears, and whether there is actually a decrease in the health and endurance of the younger generation today owing to the overstrain of their parents, is open to dispute. Certainly when one compares a portrait of Reynolds, Gainsborough, or Stuart with one by Sargent, Thayer, or Alexander, there is a noticeable difference of type, indicative of a different ideal of life in the upper stratum of society, an ideal of effort and efficiency, which is far better than a patrician dilettantism, but has in turn its dangers.We need to recall the line of AEschylus, "All the gods' work is effortless and calm." Or Matthew Arnold's sonnet on Quiet Work: "One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, A lesson that on every wind is borne, A lesson of two duties kept at one Though the loud world proclaim their enmity: Of toil unsevered from tranquility, Of labor that in lasting fruit outgrows Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose, Too great for haste, too high for rivalry..."