Chapter XIV: The Penalty of Their Pace in the City of Unrest

A dinner-party at Sherry's--twenty people sat around a table beautiful with the choicest flowers--the room was full of diners; there was more noise and clatter than one would hear even in the Carlton or Prince's; and the Hungarian band was playing--seemed the suitable panting life-breath of the scene--sensuous a little--strenuous--feverishly restless. Bright, gay, quick, and keyed loudly in order to be audible, were the voices of the diners; exchange of repartee, quick as the fire of a pom-pom, was shot and returned. Well-aimed marksmanship it was, too--no cartridges wasted. Flash of costly jewels or still brighter eyes as the shots were sped at marks worth firing at and well capable of replying. Men who had done things were there: the senator--a great lawyer--several of America's greatest business men, and the women who had helped or spurred or hindered them, but who were all worth working for or helpfully hinderous blast-furnaces to ambition. But one seat away was a man who was one of the greatest mine-owners in America, and controlled railways that were connected and dependent on these mines. Pale and sallow, with sparse hair over his big bulging forehead, power and decision and resolution were stamped on every line of his face; a small army of men worked for him--worked underground or on railroads, or looked to him as the donor of dividends, the regulator of their incomes, the arbiter of their financial destinies.

He drank no wine at dinner, yet now and again a curious up-and-down lifting movement of the table could be traced to one of his knees, which he kept crossed over the other. He waved away the coffee with the remark that it was years since he dared indulge in it; but when, after obviously impatient waiting, the time came when he might light a long cigar, he puffed out a stream of smoke with a sigh of relief, and the table was no longer shaken from that on. Presently some remark drew from him the reply, "No; the most desirable things in the world are health and sleep. I would give two million dollars to be able to sleep six hours each night. I would give twice that to be able to digest a good meal properly. I would give I don't know what to be able to rest, just rest quietly again."

And the lady next him said: "How well I understand that feeling! I don't see why we should be compelled to go on, on, on at that pace. Sometimes now when I have to drive in a cab I can barely keep myself from shrieking out aloud from sheer nervousness. I have not dined at home in my own house for three months except once, and that was when, in reply to a remonstrance to my daughter for going out so much, she said she would dine at home on Christmas Day. It is this perpetual rush, I expect, makes us so nervous; but it is so hard to stop, even when our nerves pay the price."

* * * * *

Coming out of a newspaper office in New York I happened to meet an old friend of the Cuban war times. Paler, thinner, and more drawn his face looked in the V of his turned-up collar than when I had seen him last. After talking for a few minutes I asked him whither he was going, and found he was going to take a special kind of bath and rubbing, which was part of the treatment he was undergoing for the desperate nervous trouble he was suffering from.

"It is pretty hard lines," said he. "As you know, I never drank, and took fairly good care of myself. I have not slept more than an hour or two for the past week."

Then he told me how, going home to Brooklyn a few evenings before, the nervousness had come so badly on him that he had to hire a boy to go with him. He could not go across the bridge alone.

"At the present moment," said he, "there are nine men in our office suffering from the same complaint."

He seemed to think that the treatment was doing little good; that doctors could do next to nothing.

"Rest, long rest, is what we want, I suppose; but how can a fellow get rest working in a big newspaper office in this city?"

* * * * *

The Remington machine had been rattling on like a Maxim gun in action, the operator taking down dictation on to the machine so quickly that it was almost as good as short-hand. It stopped suddenly, and the fragile anæmic woman who was working it laid down her hands in her lap, saying she was afraid she could not continue. In reply to the question if she was ill she said no--that it was simply she was nervous. She said she had only just returned from the country, where she had been resting for a week--a rest that she could ill afford, but it evidently had not been long enough.

"It is terrible, especially for those who have to keep working for a living, who have to work on to keep their heads above water."

"I suppose it is the penalty we pay for all this," she said, looking out from the window at which she sat.

Down far below was one of the busiest squares in New York; a double line of trolly-cars perpetually running through it that clanged their bells as they swung around the corner; automobiles that pinged their warning gongs and darted in and out amongst the stream of traffic fish-like; labouring horses struggling under heavy loads; the cars packed with people like cattle, standing up and hanging from the straps in the roof, toilers coming back from work; the sidewalks crowded with hurrying people. The seats in the centre of the square held slouching figures with bent heads, figures of dog-tired men--dog-tired with work or the looking for it. A sharp insistent clanging arose above the other sounds like a wailing scream of pain as an automobile ambulance rushed hospital-wards, carrying off one of those wounded in the struggle.

No one can quietly watch the seething life of the City of Unrest without being struck with the prevalence of nervous troubles amongst the people. Every day one meets instances. "I dare not drink coffee; I have not drunk it for years," one so often hears--then the piteous longing for sleep denied. "I am not going to any dances this winter; my doctor will not allow me, on account of my nerves," one of the most charming girls in New York said to me a few days ago. The doctors all declare that this nervousness is alarmingly on the increase, and throughout every class of the community--from those who work hardest, through the longest hours, to earn their bread, to those who work at the pursuit of pleasure--the mad social rush of the Charge of the Four Hundred. It is obvious that this pace cannot slacken--every year adds fresh impetus. What will it be in fifty years--at the end of the century? What will the offspring of these quivering, twitching, highly strung men and women be like? _Quo vadis, Americane?_

Already there are antidotes or remedies for this growing evil--sanatoria where the worn-out over-worked are compelled to seek refuge, asylums of repose for those who have long lost the art of enjoying it. More useful, perhaps, are the facilities for getting healthy exercise which are offered by athletic clubs, gymnasia, and the squash courts and tennis courts now being laid out on the tops of so many of the best houses. But these are only trifling against the magnitude of the menacing evil. Thousands have not the time to enjoy them, and must pay the penalty of the pace of their progress in the City of Unrest.