Self-Control, XI: Hurry, the Scourge of America

SELF-CONTROL.* BY WILLIAM GEORGE JORDAN . IX.— HURRY, THE SCOURGE OF AMERICA. The first sermon in the world was preached at the creation. It was a Divine protest against Hurry. It was a Divine object lesson of perfect law, perfect plan, perfect order, perfect method. Six days of work carefully planned, scheduled and completed were followed by — rest. Whether we accept the story as literal or as figurative, as the account of successive days or of ages comprising millions of years, matters little if we but learn the lesson. Nature is very un-American. Nature never hurries. Every phase of her working shows plan, calmness, reliability, and the absence of Hurry. Hurry always implies lack of definite method, confusion, impatience of slow growth. The Tower of Babel, the world's first sky-scraper, was a failure because of Hurry. The workers mistook their arrogant ambition for inspiration. They had too many builders, — and no architect. They thought to make up the lack of a head by a superfluity of hands. This is characteristic of Hurry. It seeks ever to make energy a substitute for a clearly defined plan, — the result is ever as hopeless as trying tu transform a hobby-horse into a real steed by brisk riding. Hurry is a counterfeit of haste. Haste has an ideal, a distinct aim to be realized by the quickest direct methods. Haste has a single compass upon which it relies for direction, and in harmony with which its course is determined. Hurry says: "I must move faster. I will get three compasses; I will have them different; I

• From Self- Control; its Kingship and Majesty. Copyright 1889 and 1905 by Fleming H. Revell Company.

SELF-CONTROL. 447 will be guided by all of them. One of them will probably be right." Hurry never realizes that slow, careful foundation work is the quickest in the end. Hurry has ruined more Americans than any other word in the vocabulary of life. It is the scourge of America; and is both a cause and a result of our high-pressure civilization. Hurry adroitly assumes so many masquerades of disguise that its identity is not always recognized. Hurry always pays the highest price for everything, and usually the goods are not delivered. In the race for wealth, men often sacrifice time, energy, health, home, happiness and honor, — everything that money cannot buy, the very things that money can never bring back. Hurry is a phanthom of paradoxes; business men, in their desire to provide for the future happiness of their family, often sacrifice the present happiness of wife and children on the altar of Hurry. They forget that their place in the home should be something greater than being merely "the man that pays the bills;" they expect consideration and thoughtfulness that they are not giving. We hear too much of a wife's duties to a husband and too little of the other side of the question. "The wife," they tell us, "should meet her husband with a smile and a kiss, should tactfully watch his moods and be ever sweetness and sunshine." W hy this continued swinging of the censer of devotion to the man of business? Why should a woman have to look up with timid glance at the face of her husband to "size up his mood?" Has not her day, too, been one of care and responsibility, and watchfulness? Has not mother-love been working over perplexing problems and worries of home and of the training of the children that wifely love may make her seek to solve in secret? Is man, then, the weaker sex that he must be pampered and treateu as tenderly as a boil trying to keep from contact with the world? In their hurry to attain some ambition, to gratify the dream of a life, men often throw honor, truth, and generosity to the winds. Politicians dare to stand by and see a city poisoned with foul water until they see where they come in on a waterworks appropriation. If it be necessary to poison an army — that, too, is but an incident in the hurry for wealth.

448 IMFRO VEMENT ERA . This is the Age of the Hothouse. The element of natural growth is pushed to one side and the hothouse and the forcepump are substituted. Nature looks on tolerantly as she says: "So far you may go, but no farther, my foolish children." The educational system of today is a monumental institution dedicated to Hurry. The children are forced to go through a series of studies that sweep the circle of all human wisdom. They are given everything that the ambitious ignorance of the age can force into their minds; they are taught everything but the essentials, —how to use their senses and how to think. Their minds become congested by a great mass of undigested facts, and still the cruel, barbarous forcing goes on. You watch it until it seems you cannot stand it a moment longer, and you instinctively put out your hand and say: "Stop! This modern slaughter of the innocents must not go on." Education smiles suavely .waves her hand complacently toward her thousands of knowledge-prisons over the country and says: "Who are you that dares speak a word against our sacred school system?" Education is in a hurry. Because she fails in fifteen years to do what half the time should accomplish by better methods, she should not be too boastful. Incompetency is not always a reason for pride. And they hurry the children into a hundred text-books, then into ill-health, then into the colleges, then into a diploma, then into life — with a dazed mind, untrained and unfitted for the real duties of living. Hurry is the deathblow to calmness, to dignity, to poise. The old-time courtesy went out when the new time hurry came in. Hurry is the father of despepsia. In the rush of our national life, the bolting of food has become a national vice. The words "Quick Lunches" might properly be placed on a thousand headstones in our cemeteries. Man forgets that he is the only animal that dines; the others merely feed. Why does he abrogate his right to dine and go to the end of the line with the mere feeders? His self-respecting stomach rebels, and expresses its indignation by indigestion. Then man has to go through life with a little bottle of pepsin tablets in his vest pocket. He is but another victim to this craze for speed. Hurry means the break-down of the nerves. It is the royal road to nervous prostration. Everything that is great in life is the product of slow growth;