d down as a general axiom in such cases, that the worst thing a
man can do is to _wait_, and the best thing he can do is to _work_; that
is to say, that in nine cases out of ten, doing something has a great
advantage over doing nothing. Such an assertion would appear a mere
obvious truism, and one requiring neither proof nor illustration, were it
not grievously palpable to the student of the great book of life--the
unwritten biographical dictionary--of the world--that an opposite system is
too often preferred and adopted by the unfortunate victims of this
"condition-of-every-body question," so clearly proposed, and in countless
instances so inefficiently and indefinitely answered.

To multiply dismal examples of such sad cases of people ruined, starved,
and in a variety of ways fearfully embarrassed and tormented during the
process of expectation, by the policy of cowardly sloth or feeble
hesitation, might, indeed, "point a moral," but would scarcely "adorn a
tale." It is doubtless an advantage to know how to avoid errors, but it is
decidedly a much greater advantage to learn practical truth. We shall
therefore leave the dark side of the argument with full confidence to the
memories, experience, and imaginations of our readers, and dwell rather--as
both a more salutary and interesting consideration--on the brighter side,
in cases of successful repartee to the grand query, which our limited
personal observation has enabled us to collect. Besides, there is nothing
attractive or exciting about intellectual inertia. The contrast between
active resistance and passive endurance is that between a machine at rest
and a machine in motion. Who that has visited the Great Exhibition can
have failed to remark the difference of interest aroused in the two cases?
What else causes the perambulating dealers in artificial spiders suspended
from threads to command so great a patronage from the juvenile population
of Paris and London? What else constitutes the superiority of an
advertising-van over a stationary poster? What sells Alexandre Dumas's
novels, and makes a balloon ascent such a favorite spectacle? "Work, man!"
said the philosopher: "hast thou not all eternity to rest in?" And to
_work_, according to Mill's "Political Economy," is to _move_; therefore
perpetual motion is the great ideal problem of mechanicians.

The first case in our museum is that of a German officer. He was sent to
the coast of Africa on an exploring expedition,