The Minnesota Pioneer

Brain Labor.--To many persons it seems a small thing to sit down and prepare matter for a periodical press; but let one inexperienced with the pen, and whose brain has never been trained to systematic thought, attempt to furnish intellectual food and recreation to his fellows, and he will soon realize that mental labor is the most destructive to health of all other toil. Were one to grub stumps out of the earth, or swing the sledgehammer twelve hours a day, he would be able to stand the drudgery with less injury to his body and soul, than half that number of hours devoted to mental employment in the way of writing matter for the book and newspaper press. Those pithy articles which constantly appear in the periodicals of the day, contain the very essence of mind or thought, and such literary gentlemen as are the best at itemizing, are the first whose constitutions are broken down, and who die of imbecility and want of muscular power.