The joy of 18th C. stress

[Peter A. McGraw]

--On Wednesday, September 28, 2005 2:25 PM -0700 Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:

> Eighteenth-century Americans held a far different view from ours of
> emotional stress.  They loved it.  It was an vital element of their
> adventurous and industrious lives. No one, of his own free will, would
> voluntarily engage in "decompressing" or "destressing."  Loss of "stress"
> meant loss of self and was felt as personally catastrophic.
>
> For example :
>
> 1796 _The Evangelical Magazine; for 1796_ IV 243  To the honour of
> America, very considerable sums of money were collected in different
> parts, and sent to New-York, for the assistance of the destressed of
> every condition.
>
> 1784 [John Filson] _The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon [sic], Formerly
> a Hunter; Containing a Narrative of the Wars of Kentucky_  ch. i [
> http://www.earlyamerica.com/lives/boone/chapt1/index.html ] The hand of
> violence shed the blood of the innocent; ... the horrid yells of savages,
> and the groans of the destressed, sounded in our ears.
>
> JL
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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***************************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ****************************