Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1910 — THE WORK CURE. [ARTICLE]

THE WORK CURE.

The famous Harvard geologist, Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, who died about four years ago, was a man of singularly wide range and vivacity of conversation. In a single hour, says a correspondent of the New York Nation, he would discuss topics as diverse as national politics, the seeds of the fossil Coniferae, ahd the question whether there might not be some ethnological considerations bearing on mathematical studies. Perhaps the most striking thing about him, after his unexcelled warmth of heart and capacity for making people free of his time and thought and interest, was his surprising industry. On one of the earliest occasions when I was thrown into contact with him, and obliged to ask for considerable portions of his time, I remember having asked if he were not overbusy. “No,” he replied. “I have a good many things to do, and a score of years ago I had nervous prostration. I went to Germany and tried all kinds of cures for It, but they did nt/good; so I came home, and ever since I’ve been trying to work it off.” Asking advice from Shaler was a very different thing from seeking It from ordinary sources. On one occasion—apropos of something now quite forgotten—he told the story of his being asked by a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School how he might best fit himself for the work of' his chosen calling. The freshly graduated theological student did not feel sure that he knew as much about men as he did about divinity. After a moment’s thought, the professor said, in substance: “Go to Colorado, get down into a drift, and dig for two years with the miners. Possibly you’ll know more about men than you do now.” The young man did so, with the result that he came back at the end .f the period to thank his adviser for he had derived from his most unconventional Wanderjahre.