The Majesty of Calmness | Page 4

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 dyspepsia. 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 thousands of 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 breakdown of the nerves. It is the
royal road to nervous prostration.
Everything that is great in life is the product of slow growth; the newer,
and greater, and higher, and nobler the work, the slower is its growth,
the surer is its lasting success. Mushrooms attain their full power in a
night; oaks require decades. A fad lives its life in a few weeks; a
philosophy lives through generations and centuries. If you are sure you
are right, do not let the voice of the world, or of friends, or of family
swerve you for a moment from your purpose. Accept slow growth if it
must be slow, and know the results must come, as you would accept the
long, lonely hours of the night,--with absolute assurance that the
heavy-leaded moments must bring the morning.
Let us as individuals banish the word "Hurry" from our lives. Let us
care for nothing so much that we would pay honor and self-respect as
the price of hurrying it. Let us cultivate calmness, restfulness, poise,
sweetness,--doing our best, bearing all things as bravely as we can;
living our life undisturbed by the prosperity of the wicked or the malice
of the envious. Let us not be impatient, chafing at delay, fretting over
failure, wearying over results, and weakening under opposition. Let us
ever turn our face toward the future with confidence and trust, with the
calmness of a life in harmony with itself, true to its ideals, and slowly
and constantly progressing toward their realization.
Let us see that cowardly word Hurry in all its most degenerating phases,
let us see that it ever kills truth, loyalty, thoroughness; and let us
determine that, day by day, we will seek more and more to substitute
for it the calmness and repose of a true life, nobly lived.

III
The Power of Personal Influence

The only responsibility that a man cannot evade in this life is the one he
thinks of least,--his personal influence. Man's conscious influence,
when he is on dress-parade, when he is posing to impress those around
him,--is woefully small. But his unconscious influence, the silent,
subtle radiation of his personality, the effect of his words and acts, the
trifles he never considers,--is tremendous. Every moment of life he is

changing to a degree the life of the whole world. Every man has an
atmosphere which is affecting every other. So silent and unconsciously
is this influence working, that man may forget that it exists.
All the forces of Nature,--heat, light, electricity and gravitation,-- are
silent and invisible. We never see them; we only know that they exist
by seeing the effects they produce. In all Nature the wonders of the
"seen" are dwarfed into insignificance when compared with the majesty
and glory of the "unseen." The great sun itself does not supply enough
heat and light to sustain animal and vegetable life on the earth. We are
dependent for nearly half of our light and heat upon the stars, and the
greater part of this supply of life-giving energy comes from invisible
stars, millions of miles from the earth. In a thousand ways Nature
constantly seeks to lead men to a keener and deeper realization of the
power and the wonder of the invisible.
Into the hands of every individual is given a marvellous power for good
or for evil,--the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is
simply the constant radiation of what a man really is, not what he
pretends to be. Every man, by his mere living, is radiating sympathy, or
sorrow, or morbidness, or cynicism, or happiness, or hope, or any of a
hundred other qualities. Life is a state of constant radiation and
absorption; to exist is to radiate; to exist is to be the recipient of
radiations.
There are men and women whose presence seems to radiate sunshine,
cheer and optimism. You feel calmed and rested and restored in a
moment to