alk which will
constitute our most congenial occupation.

I am sure that your flesh creeps at this apocalyptic vision. Mine
certainly did so; and I cannot believe that our muscular vigor will ever
be a superfluity. Even if the day ever dawns in which it will not be
needed for fighting the old heavy battles against Nature, it will still
always be needed to furnish the background of sanity, serenity, and
cheerfulness to life, to give moral elasticity to our disposition, to
round off the wiry edge of our fretfulness, and make us good-humored and
easy of approach. Weakness is too apt to be what the doctors call
irritable weakness. And that blessed internal peace and confidence, that
_acquiescentia in seipso_, as Spinoza used to call it, that wells up
from every part of the body of a muscularly well-trained human being,
and soaks the indwelling soul of him with satisfaction, is, quite apart
from every consideration of its mechanical utility, an element of
spiritual hygiene of supreme significance.

And now let me go a step deeper into mental hygiene, and try to enlist
your insight and sympathy in a cause which I believe is one of paramount
patriotic importance to us Yankees. Many years ago a Scottish medical
man, Dr. Clouston, a mad-doctor as they call him there, or what we
should call an asylum physician (the most eminent one in Scotland),
visited this country, and said something that has remained in my memory
ever since. "You Americans," he said, "wear too much expression on your
faces. You are living like an army with all its reserves engaged in
action. The duller countenances of the British population betoken a
better scheme of life. They suggest stores of reserved nervous force to
fall back upon, if any occasion should arise that requires it. This
inexcitability, this presence at all times of power not used, I regard,"
continued Dr. Clouston, "as the great safeguard of our British people.
The other thing in you gives me a sense of insecurity, and you ought
somehow to tone yourselves down. You really do carry too much
expression, you take too intensely the trivial moments of life."

Now Dr. Clouston is a trained reader of the secrets of the soul as
expressed upon the countenance, and the observation of his which I quote
seems to me to mean a great deal. And all Americans who stay in Europe
long enough to get accustomed to the spirit that reigns and expresses
itself there, so unexcitable as compared with ours, make a si