n returning thanks I should deliver something very
much like a homily. But I have thought I could not better convey my
thanks than by the expression of a sympathy which issues in a fear. If,
as I gather, this intemperance in work affects more especially the
Anglo-American part of the population--if there results an undermining
of the physique, not only in adults, but also in the young, who, as I
learn from your daily journals, are also being injured by overwork--if
the ultimate consequence should be a dwindling away of those among you
who are the inheritors of free institutions and best adapted to them;
then there will come a further difficulty in the working out of that
great future which lies before the American nation. To my anxiety on
this account you must please ascribe the unusual character of my
remarks.

And now I must bid you farewell. When I sail by the _Germanic_ on
Saturday, I shall bear with me pleasant remembrances of my intercourse
with many Americans, joined with regrets that my state of health has
prevented me from seeing a larger number.

* * * * *

[A few words may fitly be added respecting the causes of this
over-activity in American life--causes which may be identified as having
in recent times partially operated among ourselves, and as having
wrought kindred, though less marked, effects. It is the more worth while
to trace the genesis of this undue absorption of the energies in work,
since it well serves to illustrate the general truth which should be
ever present to all legislators and politicians, that the indirect and
unforeseen results of any cause affecting a society are frequently, if
not habitually, greater and more important than the direct and foreseen
results.

This high pressure under which Americans exist, and which is most
intense in places like Chicago, where the prosperity and rate of growth
are greatest, is seen by many intelligent Americans themselves to be an
indirect result of their free institutions and the absence of those
class-distinctions and restraints existing in older communities. A
society in which the man who dies a millionaire is so often one who
commenced life in poverty, and in which (to paraphrase a French saying
concerning the soldier) every news-boy carries a president's seal in his
bag, is, by consequence, a society in which all are subject to a stress
of competition for wealth and honour, greater than can exist in a
society wh