that are efficacious in the human physiology. It is no doubt true,
also, that the people do not tan in this climate, as in ours, and that
the delicate flesh tints show more on that account.
I speak thus of these things with reference to our standards at home,
because I found that these standards were ever present in my mind, and
that I was unconsciously applying them to whatever I saw and wherever I
went, and often, as I shall have occasion to show, to their discredit.
Climate is a great matter, and no doubt many of the differences between
the English stock at home and its offshoot in our country are traceable
to this source. Our climate is more heady and less stomachic than the
English; sharpens the wit, but dries up the fluids and viscera; favors
an irregular, nervous energy, but exhausts the animal spirits. It is,
perhaps, on this account that I have felt since my return how much
easier it is to be a dyspeptic here than in Great Britain. One's
appetite is keener and more ravenous, and the temptation to bolt one's
food greater. The American is not so hearty an eater as the Englishman,
but the forces of his body are constantly leaving his stomach in the
lurch, and running off into his hands and feet and head. His eyes are
bigger than his belly, but an Englishman's belly is a deal bigger than
his eyes, and the number of plum puddings and the amount of Welsh
rarebit he devours annually would send the best of us to his grave in
half that time. We have not enough constitutional inertia and
stolidity; our climate gives us no rest, but goads us day and night;
and the consequent wear and tear of life is no doubt greater in this
country than in any other on the globe. We are playing the game more
rapidly, and I fear less thoroughly and sincerely, than the mother
country.
The more uniform good health of English women is thought to be a matter
of exercise in the open air, as walking, riding, driving, but the prime
reason is mainly a climatic one, uniform habits of exercise being more
easily kept up in that climate than in this, and being less exhaustive,
one day with another. You can walk there every day in the year without
much discomfort, and the stimulus is about the same. Here it is too hot
in summer and too cold in winter, or else it keys you up too tight one
day and unstrings you the next; all fire and motion in the morning, and
all listlessness and ennui in the afternoon; a spur one hour and a
sedative the next.
A watch will not keep as steady time here as in Britain, and the human
clock-work is more liable to get out of repair for the same reason. Our
women, especially, break down prematurely, and the decay of maternity
in this country is no doubt greater than in any of the oldest civilized
communities. One reason, doubtless, is that our women are the greatest
slaves of fashion in the whole world, and, in following the whims of
that famous courtesan, have the most fickle and destructive climate to
contend with.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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