The joy of 18th C. stress

[Jonathan Lighter]

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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