17. Joel Benton, “The Holiday Hallucination,” North American Review 146 (April 1888): 472-473.


Criticism of the number of legal holidays established since the Civil War. “It is possible that business and the more serious needs of the community can stand this; but one is strongly reminded by this increasing holiday tendency of the man who taught his horse, after a considerable series of experiments, to go without eating. The scheme worked perfectly, until the last straw was taken away, when the inconsiderate animal one day, and without fully appreciating the merits of such a reform, suddenly gave up the ghost.”