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The Spanish people seem to be imbued with all the listlessness of those of the tropics, though not by the same enervating influence. Nature is willing to meet men more than half way, even in Spain, but will not pour out there her products with the lavishness which characterizes her in the low latitudes.
Here were no viciously-attractive pictures on the walls no enervating sweet odors in the atmosphere no contrivances of ventilation to cleanse away the stench of bad tobacco-smoke and brandy-flavored human breath with which the room reeked all night long.
In his opinion the years of peace that had followed the first war in Slesvig had had an enervating effect; public speakers and journalists had taken the places of brave men; many a solution of a difficulty, announced at first with enthusiasm, had in course of time petrified into a mere set phrase.
At the risk of being hard and coarse, it will seem preferable to dispense with this dissolving force of the beautiful rather than see human nature a prey to its enervating influence, notwithstanding all its refining advantages.
The low-ceilinged room was very warm, its comfort seemed enervating, and he felt braced as he thought of the windswept prairie. Then he knew his remarks were vague and disconnected. It was a relief to plunge into the business he had come about. "I had better tell you that I am going to ask Helen to marry me," he said. Mrs. Dalton did not look surprised, and he thought Miss Graham smiled.
Youths, whose younger years were fervid with the resolution to strike and win, to deserve, at least, a gentle remembrance, if not a dazzling fame, are content to eat, and drink, and sleep well; to go to the opera and all the balls; to be known as "gentlemanly," and "aristocratic," and "dangerous," and "elegant;" to cherish a luxurious and enervating indolence, and to "succeed," upon the cheap reputation of having been "fast" in Paris.
Cases in which there is culpable neglect of the child due not to poverty, but to the fact that the money which should go to the proper nutrition of the child is squandered in drink, or on other enervating pleasures, are therefore cases in which recourse must be had to measures which enforce upon the parent the obligation to feed and clothe his children.
Nearly all the "free-livers" were men of unusual mental powers; some held out against the enervating life, others were ruined by it. The most celebrated and the cleverest among them was Eugene Rastignac, who entered, with de Marsay's help, upon a political career, in which he has since distinguished himself.
Money rolled into the pockets of these Jamaican planters; there is but little sport possible in the island, and they had no intellectual pursuits, so they just built fine houses, filled them with rare china, Chippendale furniture, and silver plate, and found their amusements in eating, drinking and gambling. Even to-day the climate of Jamaica is very enervating.
A few years since, I wrote: "If the conqueror profits much by his conquest, as the Romans in one sense did, it is the conqueror who is threatened by the enervating effect of the soft and luxurious life; while it is the conquered who are forced to labour for the conqueror, and who learn in consequence those qualities of steady industry which are certainly a better moral training than living upon the fruits of others, upon labour extorted at the sword's point.
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