The Majesty of Calmness | Page 3

Hurry always implies lack of definite method, confusion, impatience of
slow growth. The Tower of Babel, the world's first skyscraper, 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
a characteristic of Hurry. It seeks ever to make energy a substitute for a

clearly defined plan,--the result is ever as hopeless as trying to
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 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 has 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
phantom 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." Why this continual 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 treated 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 water-works appropriation. If it be necessary
to poison an army,--that, too, is but an incident in the hurry for wealth.
This is the Age of the Hothouse. The element of natural growth is
pushed to one side and the hothouse and the force-pump are substituted.
Nature looks on tolerantly as she says: "So far you may go, but no
farther, my foolish children."
The educational system of to-day 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. Incompetence is not always a
reason for pride. And they hurry the children into a hundred textbooks,
then into ill-health, then into the colleges, then into a diploma, then into
life,--with a dazed mind,