Fatigue party

“ The whole party were become so weak from fatigue and thirst, that they could not get on fast, and they found it necessary to save their food as much as possible, that it might last to the end of the long journey. ”

“ The fatigue of campaigning in this country is almost inconceivable. I have slept, when I have had time to sleep, in my clothes. I seldom divest myself of my sword, boots or coat; my horse is constantly saddled, and we eat when provisions are to be got, and we have nothing else to do. ”

“ Talk of labor, and look at the upper classes in London or in New York in the fashionable season. Do any women work harder? To rush from crowd to crowd all night, night after night, seeing what they are tired of, making the agreeable over an abyss of inward yawning, crowded, jostled, breathing hot air, and crushed in halls and stairways, without a moment of leisure for months and months, till [Pg 105] brain and nerve and sense reel, and the country is longed for as a period of resuscitation and relief! Such is the release from labor and fatigue brought by wealth. ”

“ If every member of the organization stands ready to endorse the fatigue elimination, and to co-operate in further fatigue elimination for the good of all, the social attitude shows that the work that has been done is worth while. ”

“ We moved slowly on, as people naturally would who were about to be overwhelmed in a calamity that threatened their annihilation, while an indefinable sensation of sleepiness and inertia seized the whole of the party. ”

“ Among his acknowledgments to his teachers and friends, he mentions that he learned from his governor to be neither of the green nor the blue party at the games in the circus (showing that the feud was in active force at the time) ; also endurance of labor, to want little, to work with his own hands, not to meddle with other people's affairs, and not to be ready to listen to slander. ”

“ I rather think that is true. Anyway, prove it to us this summer and there is no one who will be gladder than I to take back the aspersion. Is it understood then? You have your house-party and when you come back you are pledged to honest work, no shirking, no requests for time off, no complaints. ”

“ If they exhibit occasional calms, these only serve as short-lived contrasts to the furious storms, that are to succeed. If, now and then, intervals of felicity open themselves to view, we behold them with a mixture of regret, arising from the reflection, that the pleasing scenes before us are soon to be overwhelmed by the tempestuous waves of sedition and party rage. ”

“ After the question of suitable quarters for a party comes the problem of keeping them in good spirits during the four months of darkness, the secret of which lies in keeping each member busy and in varying the monotony of the work as much as possible. ”

“ Life, then, is chance, luck; to which no guiding factors, laws, or binding principles can be adduced.
Before marching off from the bemudded "parade" ground we were fed up. Constant rain had rendered an always muddy surface into a slimy quagmire, in which every step forward was a conscious effort. There was little singing in either Companies (A. and D.) , during the short march to the train conveying the party to near a shell-infested area where the said party would partake of its outdoor picnic. "Party"—the ironical humour of it!
Each lad was tired, wet, and hungry. Tempers easily ruffled. ”

“ Let each comrade finish his morning nap. A [Pg 56] man cannot dispense with sleep, and it is cruel to rob a friend of what is almost his life and health. But, if any one of your party requires more sleep than the others, he ought to contrive to "turn in" earlier, and so rise with the company. ”

“ Do we belong in the class of the people who must get their rest by giving up, by the abolition of all function, or in the class who rest by the change of function, by doing something different from the day's work? It is a question of fact and must be found out by each individual for himself.
Just here the individuality of fatigue, which I have been trying to make clear all along, becomes obvious. We are rested by making a success of something. If we have been making what seems to us a failure of something, it is amazing how it rests us to make a success of something. ”

“ You pick out and discuss, in the company of congenial friends, all the weak points in your opponents' organisation, and unconsciously dwell upon and exaggerate all their mishaps, till it seems to you a miracle that the hated party holds together for an hour.
"Our principle is not so much active demonstration—that we leave to others—as passive embarrassment, to weaken and unnerve," said the first man. "Wherever an organisation is crippled, wherever confusion is thrown into any branch of any department, we gain a step for those who take on the work; we are but the forerunners." ”

“ The outbursts of revelry, the loud and boisterous laugh, and still louder oaths of the party who occupied the dwelling-house near at hand, showed that they had plunged into their usual debauch, and now caroused over their frequently filled cups; and the clamor that broke upon the night might have baffled the slumbers of a mind less anxious and wakeful than his own. ”

“ Fancy this party the victim of political exile, banished by the law, and a more sorrowful march could not be imagined; but the voluntary hardship becomes pleasure, and it is undeniable that the spirits of the party rise as the difficulties increase. ”

“ Ransome and her daughter; so a crowd we must have, and how have a crowd without giving a grand party? I knew that this would be a shocking proposition to him, but I was prepared to meet all objections; and when, with every nerve alert and every charm exerted to its utmost, I sat down at his side that evening to plead my cause, I knew by the sparkle of his eye and the softening of the bitter lines that sometimes hardened his mouth, that the battle was half won before I spoke, and that I should have my party whatever it might cost him in mental stress and worry. ”

“ The hopes of all, the vanity of many, were frustrated and shocked by finding that the exertions and expenditure of long months were not only fruitless, but had not even attracted as numerous an assembly or excited as much interest, as an ordinary party struggle on some petty point of factitious interest forgotten as soon as fought. ”

“ Apart from preventable physical exhaustion, and the languor and ill-humour produced by boredom, there are several conditions of mind which may evilly affect the power of a party, and for varying lengths of time. ”

“ No one who has never been upon such duty as those advanced parties have to perform, can form any adequate idea of the trouble, fatigue and dangers which they have to encounter. Their whole time is spent in marches, (especially night marches,) watching, starving, and, in cold weather, freezing and sickness. ”

“ If a man gets only seven hours’ rest after intense labor, part of the fatigue-elements must have remained. They accumulate in time, finally they summate, and exercise their influence even at the beginning of the service. Socialists complain justly about this matter. The most responsible positions are occupied by chronically fatigued individuals, and when nature extorts her rights we punish the helpless men. ”

“ Nothing pleases him for a longer spell than desultory conversation with someone who is content to listen, or with someone who brings news of electoral chances. Of course he is a tired man, but his fatigue is not only physical. ”

“ The health of many men is frequently injured by excessive political work and excitement. Instances of such cases must occur to every one present. The illness from which Mr. Bright is now suffering, and the extreme exhaustion of the Prime Minister, at the end of the session of 1869, were both doubtless produced by the mental strain attendant on too much political work. ”

“ A great panic is going to take place, and "then with hunger parades in our streets, and Maxim guns also; with strikes in every industry, and a socialist meeting on every corner—the great change will be made by whatever party happens to be in power at the time." ”

“ I have seen melancholy overspread a whole family at the disappointment of a party for cards; and when, after the proposal of a thousand schemes, and the dispatch of the footman upon a hundred messages, they have submitted, with gloomy resignation, to the misfortune of passing one evening in conversation with each other, on a sudden, such are the revolutions of the world, an unexpected visitor has brought them relief, acceptable as provision to a starving city, and enabled them to hold out till the next day. ”

“ Delayed fatigue, then, is an important thing to notice in ourselves and to bring home to the people that we are trying to help. I suppose one could say that a great part of our business in social work is to call people's attention to things; if they have recognized them before, they will perhaps get a lesson out of what we say. Such matters are referred fatigue, delayed fatigue, accumulated fatigue,—familiar enough, [Pg 118] only the person does not act on them because he does not notice them. ”

“ Night and storm might make the work severe, though there was no danger for men of average capacity, and with first-rate guides. But, suddenly and perversely, the heaviest and strongest man of the party declared himself to be ill. ”

“ The men who take the first plunge in perilous enterprises seldom escape the experience which befell us. Our closest associates came promptly, but the gushing sympathisers who crowd the platforms of a popular party began to drop off like leaves in autumn. ”

“ That calm serenity, which moderates and chastens its powers, passions and emotions, is a stranger in a political contest. That mind, inured to party feelings and party interests, can never attain its full vigor and manhood—such is the nature of excess in political pursuits. ”

“ Be you teacher, manager, worker, or simply a member of the great public to which we all belong, begin to work for fatigue elimination, and begin now.
The good in your life consists of the quantity of “Happiness Minutes” that you have created or caused. Increase your own record by eliminating unnecessary fatigue of the workers. ”

“ But in a private house or in private grounds a morning party is a bore. One is called on to eat and drink at unnatural hours. One is obliged to give up the day which is useful, and is then left without resource for the evening which is useless. ”

“ She learned that many of them worked harder for their political husbands than an army of secretaries, that others rose, during the season, at an hour when they fain would have slept off the fatigue of the day before, in order to get through a mass of correspondence relating to the particular problem, political, social, or economic, they were striving to solve. ”

“ In office-hours—which I suppose reduce most men to the mental condition of a coffee-mill or a mangle—time sped along much as usual: it was in the pauses of life, the desolate hours when books and newspapers palled on the sated appetite, and when, thrown back upon one's own dreary musings, one strove—all in vain—to people the vacant air with the dear faces of absent friends, that the real bitterness of solitude made itself felt. ”

“ There is the expression of fatigue both of mind and body, which speaks of midnight watches over books, varied with midnight carouses at the imperial table, and the fierce caresses of rival mistresses. There is the glance of fear, not of open enemies, but of pretended friends; the reminiscence of wanton blows, and the anticipation of the deadly potion. Above all, there is the anxious glance of dependence, which seems to cast about for a model to imitate, for ministers to shape a policy, and for satellites to execute it. ”

“ And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions beyond what even in the days of highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor. ”

“ They don’t expect me to have much of any of my allowance left when I get home, and I never intended to, anyway. But anybody with half a brain is expected to be able to get home from a party—any kind of a party—without crying for help, and without walking, either ”

“ One of the party seems to live by the blessing of him who invented sleep, and he is always good for half of the twenty-four hours—how they must envy him whose unhappy brains can be stupefied only by poisonous chloral! ”

“ There is of course the fatigue that comes of nervous strain and anxiety, and this is very great, but the haggard visage and the husky voice are all unnecessary. It is no wonder to be sure that some men break down in campaigns, since their cause is so bad that anyone might well be expected to sicken in its advocacy, and in furthering it it is perhaps inevitable that their efforts partake in a measure of its corruption. ”

“ Four times a year with the changing seasons they shall be shut up like the knife grinders' dogs in great wheels and condemned to grind wind for ten hours.
The lawyers and legislators shall suffer the same punishment. Under the regime of idleness, to kill the time, which kills us second by second, there will be shows and theatrical performances always and always. And here we have the very work for our bourgeois legislators. We shall organize them into traveling companies to go to the fairs and villages, giving legislative exhibitions. ”

“ That is a working-party: interesting as a first experience to an officer; but when multiplied exceedingly, by day, by night, in rain, mud, sleet, and snow, carrying trench boards, filling sand-bags, digging clay, bailing out liquid mud, and returning cold and drenched, without soup—then, working-parties became a monotonous succession of discomforts that wore out the spirit as well as the body. ”

“ In spite of this confident assurance, the fatigue man makes off himself, curses overtaking him as he goes, maledictions charged with offensive reflections on his honesty and temperance, imprecations inspired by this revelation of a ration reduced.
All the same, they throw themselves on the food, and eat it standing, squatting, kneeling, sitting on tins, or on haversacks pulled out of the holes where they sleep—or even prone, their backs on the ground, disturbed by passers-by, cursed at and cursing. ”