As we get rid of all the grosser forms of hurry we find in ourselves
other hurry habits that are finer and more subtle, and gradually our
standards of quiet, deliberate ways get higher; we become more
sensitive to hurry, and a hurried way of doing things grows more and
more disagreeable to us.
Watch the women coming out of a factory in the dinner hour or at six
o'clock. They are almost tumbling over each other in their hurry to
get away. They are putting on their jackets, pushing in their
hatpins, and running along as if their dinner were running away from
them.
Something akin to that same attitude of rush we can see in any large
city when the clerks come out of the shops, for their luncheon hour,
or when the work of the day is over.
If we were to calculate in round numbers the amount of time saved by
this rush to get away from the shop, we should find three minutes,
probably the maximum--and if we balance that against the loss to
body and mind which is incurred, we should find the three minutes'
gain quite overweighted by the loss of many hours, perhaps days,
because of the illness which must be the result of such habitual
contraction.
It is safe to predict when we see a woman rushing away from factory
or shop that she is not going to "let up" on that rate of speed
until she is back again at work. Indeed, having once started brain
and body with such an exaggerated impetus, it is not possible to
quiet down without a direct and decided use of the will, and how is
that decided action to be taken if the brain is so befogged with the
habit of hurry that it knows no better standard?
One of the girls from a large factory came rushing up to the kind,
motherly head of the boarding house the other day saying:--
"It is abominable that I should be kept waiting so long for my
dinner.
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