In a preceding chapter, I have shown that worry is a product of our modern civilization, and that it belongs only to the Occidental world. It is a modern disease, prevalent only among the so-called civilized peoples. There is no doubt that in many respects wearewhat we call ourselves—the most highly civilized people in the world. But do we not pay too high a price for much of our civilization? If it is such that it fails to enable us to conserve our health, our powers of enjoyment, our spontaneity, our mental vigor, our spirituality, and the exuberant radiance of our life—bodily, mental, spiritual—I feel that we need to examine it carefully and find out wherein lies its inadequacy or its insufficiency.
While our civilization has reached some very elevated points, and some men have made wonderful advancement in varied fields, it cannot be denied that the mass of men and women are still groping along in the darkness of mental mediocrity, and on the mud-flats of the commonplace. Ten thousand men and women can now read where ten alone read a few centuries ago. But what are the ten thousand reading? That which will elevate, improve, benefit? See the piles of sensational yellow novels, magazines, and newspapers that deluge us day by day, week by week, month by month, for the answer. True, there are many who desire the better forms of literature, and for these we give thanks; they are of the salt that saves our civilization.
I do not wish to seem, even, to be cynical or pessimistic, but whenI look at some of the mental pabulum that our newspapers supply,I cannot but feel that we are making vast efforts to maintain thecommonplace and dignify the trivial.
For instance: Look at the large place the Beauty Department of a newspaper occupies in the thoughts of thousands of women and girls. Instead of seeking to know what they should do to keep their bodies and minds healthful and vigorous, they are deeply concerned over their physical appearance. They write and ask questions that show how worried they are about their skin—freckles, pimples, discolorations, patches, etc.—their complexion, their hair, its color, glossiness, quantity, how it should be dressed, and a thousand and one things that clearly reveal theimproper emphasisplaced upon them. I do not wish to ignore the basic facts behind these anxious questionings. It is right and proper that women (and men also) should give due attention to their physical appearance. But when it becomes a mere matter of theoutwardshow of cosmetics, powders, rouges, washes, pencils, and things that affect the outside only, then the emphasis is in the wrong place, and we are worrying about the wrong thing. Our appearance is mainly the result of our physical and mental condition. If the body is healthy, the skin and hair will need no especial attention, and, indeed, every wise person knows that the application of many of the cosmetics, etc., commonly used, is injurious, if not positively dangerous.
Then, too, observation shows that too many women and girls go beyond reasonable attention to these matters and begin to worry over them. Once become slaves to worry, and every hour of the day some new irritant will arise. Some new "dope" is advertised; some new fashion devised; some new frivolity developed. Vanity and worry now begin to vie with each other as to which shall annoy and vex, sting and irritate their victim the more. Each is a nightmare of a different breed, but no sooner does one bound from the saddle, before the other puts in an appearance and compels its victim to a performance. Only a thorough awakening can shake such nightmares off, and comparatively few have any desire to be awakened. I have watched such victims and they arouse in me both laughter and sadness. One is sure her hair is not the proper color to match her complexion and eyes. It must be dyed. Then follows the worries as to what dye she shall use, and methods of application. Invariably the results produce worry, for they are never satisfactory, and now she is worried while dressing, while eating, and when she goes out into the street, lest people notice that her hair is improperly dyed. Every stranger that looks at her adds to the worry, for it confirms her previous fears that she does not look all right. If she tries another hair of the dog that has already bitten her and allows the hair specialist to guide her again, she goes through more worries of similar fashion. She must treat her hair in a certain way to conform to prevailing styles—and so she worries hourly over a matter that, at the outside, should occupy her attention for a few minutes of each day.
There are men who are equally worried over their appearance. Their hair is not growing properly, or their ears are not the proper shape, or their ears are too large, or their hands are too rough, or their complexion doesn't match the ties they like to wear, or some equally foolish and nonsensical thing. Some wish to be taller, others not so tall; quite an army seeks to be thinner and another of equal numbers desires to be stouter; some wish they were blondes, and others that they were brunettes. The result is that drug-stores, beauty-parlors, and complexion specialists for men and women are kept busy all their time, robbing poor, hard-working creatures of their earnings because of insane worries that they are not appearing as well as they ought to do.
Clothing is a perpetual source of worry to thousands. They must keep up with the styles, the latest fashions, for to be "out of fashion," "a back number," gives them "a conniption fit." An out-of-date hat, or shirt-waist, jacket, coat, skirt, or shoe humiliates and distresses them more than would a violation of the moral law—provided it were undetected.
To these, my worrying friends, I continually put the question: Is it worth while? Is the game worth the shot? What do you gain for all your worry? Rest and peace of mind? Alas, no! If the worry and effort accomplished anything, I would be the last to deprecate it, but observation and experience have taught me thatthe more you yield to these demons of vanity and worry, the more relentlessly they harry you. They veritably are demons that seize you by the throat and hang on like grim death until they suffocate and strangle you.
Do you propose, therefore, any longer to submit? Are you wilfully and knowingly going to allow yourself to remain within their grasp? You have a remedy in your own hands. Kill your foolish vanity by determining to accept yourself as you are. All the efforts in the world will not make any changes worth while. Fix upon the habits of dress, etc., that good sense tells you are reasonable and in accord with your age, your position and your purse, and then follow them regardless of the fashion or the prevailing style. You know as well as I that, unless you are a near-millionaire, you cannot possibly keep up with the many and various changes demanded by current fashion. Then why worry yourself by trying? Why spend your small income upon the unattainable, or upon that which, even if you could attain it, you would find unsatisfying and incomplete?
In your case, worry is certainly the result of mental inoccupancy. This is sometimes called "empty headedness," and while the term seems somewhat harsh and rough, it is pretty near the truth. If you spent one-tenth the amount of energy seeking to put somethingintoyour head that you spend worrying as to what you shall putonyour head, and how to fix it up, your life would soon be far more different than you can now conceive.
Carelessness and laziness are both great causes of worry. The careless man, the lazy man are each indifferent as to how their work is done; such men seldom do well that which they undertake. Everything carelessly or lazily done is incomplete, inadequate, incompetent, and, therefore, a source of distress, discontent, and worry. A careless or lazy plumber causes much worry, for, even though his victims may have learned the lesson I am endeavoring to inculcate throughout these pages, it is a self-evident proposition that they will not allow his indifferent work to stand without correction. Therefore, the telephone bell calls continually, he or his men must go out and do the work again, and when pay-day comes, he fails to receive the check good work would surely have made forthcoming to him.
The schoolboy, schoolgirl, has to learn this lesson, and the sooner the better. The teacher never nags the careful and earnest student; only the lazy and careless are worried by extra lessons, extra recitals, impositions, and the like.
All through life carelessness and laziness bring worry, and he is a wise person who, as early as he discovers these vices in himself, seeks to correct or, better still, eliminate them.
Another form of worry is that wherein the worrier is sure that no one is to be relied upon to do his duty. Dickens, in his immortalPickwick Papers, gives a forceful example of this type. Mr. Magnus has just introduced himself to Pickwick, and they find they are both going to Norwich on the same stage.
'Now, gen'lm'n,' said the hostler, 'Coach is ready, if you please.'
'Is all my luggage in?' inquired Magnus.
'All right, Sir.'
'Is the red bag in?'
'All right, Sir.'
'And the striped bag?'
'Fore boot, Sir.'
'And the brown-paper parcel?'
'Under the seat, Sir.'
'And the leathern hat-box?'
'They're all in, Sir.'
'Now will you get up?' said Mr. Pickwick.
'Excuse me,' replied Magnus, standing on the wheel. 'Excuse me, Mr. Pickwick, I cannot consent to get up in this state of uncertainty. I am quite satisfied from that man's manner, that that leather hat-box is not in.'
The solemn protestations of the hostler being unavailing, the leather hat-box was obliged to be raked up from the lowest depth of the boot, to satisfy him that it had been safely packed; and after he had been assured on this head, he felt a solemn presentiment, first, that the red bag was mislaid, and next, that the striped bag had been stolen, and then that the brown-paper parcel had become untied. At length when he had received ocular demonstration of the groundless nature of each and every one of these suspicions, he consented to climb up to the roof of the coach, observing that now he had taken everything off his mind he felt quite comfortable and happy.
But this was only a temporary feeling, for as they journeyed along, every break in the conversation was filled up by Mr. Magnus's "loudly expressed anxiety respecting the safety and well-being of the two bags, the leather hat-box, and the brown-paper parcel."
Of course, this is an exaggerated picture, yet it properly suggests and illustrates this particular, senseless form of worry, with which we are all more or less familiar. In business, such a worrier is a constant source of irritation to all with whom he comes in contact, either as inferior or superior. To his inferiors, his worrying is a bedeviling influence that irritates and helps produce the very incapacity for attention to detail that is required; and to superiors, it is a sure sign of incompetency. Experience demonstrates that such an one is incapable of properly directing any great enterprise. Men must be trusted if you would bring out their capacities. Their work should be specifically laid out before them; that is, that which is required of them; not, necessarily, in minute detail, but the general results that are to be achieved. Then give them their freedom to work the problems out in their own way. Give them responsibility, trust them, and then leave them alone.Quit your worryingabout them. Give them a fair chance, expect, demand results, and if they fail, fire them and get those who are more competent. Mistrust and worry in the employer lead to uncertainty and worry in the employee and these soon spell out failure.
In subsequent chapters, various worries are discussed, with their causes and cures. One thing I cannot too strongly and too often emphasize, and that is, that the more one studies the worries referred to, he is compelled to see the great truth of the proverb, "More of our worries come from within than from without." In other words, we make more of our worries, by worrying, than are made for us by the cares of life. This fact in itself should lead us to be suspicious of every worry that besets us.
There is an army, whose numbers are legion, who worry about their health and that of the members of their family. What with the doctors scaring the life out of them with the germ theory, seeking to obtain legislation to vaccinate them, examine their children nude in school, take out their tonsils, appendices, and other internal organs, inject serums into them for this, that, and the other, and requiring them to observe a score and one maxims which they do not understand, there is no wonder they are worried. Then when one considers the army of physicians who feel it to be their duty to write of sickness for the benefit of the people, who give detailed symptoms of every disease known; and of the larger army of quacks who deliberately live and fatten themselves upon the worries they can create in the minds of the ignorant, the vicious and the diseased; of the patent-medicine manufacturers, who spend millions of dollars annually in scaring people into the use of their nostrums—none of which are worth the cost of the paper with which they are wrapped up—is there any wonder that people, who are not trained to think, should be worried. Worries meet them on every hand, at every corner. Do they feel an ache or a pain? According to such a doctor, or such a patent-medicine advertisement, that is a dangerous symptom which must be checked at once or the most fearful results will ensue.
Then there are the naturopaths, physicultopaths, gymnastopaths, hygienists, raw food advocates, and a thousand and one other notionists, who give advice as to what, when, and how you shall eat. Horace Fletcher insists that food be chewed until it is liquid; another authority says, "Bosh!" to this and asks you to look at the dog who bolts his meat and is still healthy, vigorous and strong. The raw food advocate assures you that the only good food is uncooked, and that you take out this, that, and the other by cooking, all of which are essential to the welfare of the body. Between thesenatural authoritiesand themedical authorities, there is a great deal of warfare going on all the time, and the layman knows not wherein true safety lies. Is it any wonder that he is worried.
Many members of the medical profession and the drug-stores have themselves to thank for this state of perpetual worriment and mental unrest. They inculcated, nurtured, and fostered a colossal ignorance in regard to the needs of the body, and a tremendous dread and blind fear of everything that seems the slightest degree removed from the everyday normal. They have persistently taught those who rely upon them that the only safe and wise procedure is to rush immediately to a physician upon the first sign of anything even slightly out of the ordinary. Then, with wise looks, mysterious words, strange symbols, and loathsome decoctions, they have sent their victims home to imagine that some marvelous wonder work will follow the swallowing of their abominable mixtures instead of frankly and honestly telling their consultants that their fever was caused by overeating, by too late hours, by dancing in an ill-ventilated room, by too great application to business, by too many cocktails, or too much tobacco smoking.
The results are many and disastrous. People become confirmed "worriers" about their health. On the slightest suspicion of an ache or a pain, they rush to the doctor or the drug-store for a prescription, a dose, a powder, a potion, or a pill. The telephone is kept in constant operation about trivialities, and every month a bill of greater or lesser extent has to be paid.
While I do not wish to deprecate the calling in of a physician in any serious case, by those who deem it advisable, I do condemn as absurd, unnecessary, and foolish in the highest degree, this perpetual worry about trivial symptoms of health. Every truthful physician will frankly tell you—if you ask him—that worrying is often the worst part of the trouble; in other words, that if you never did a thing in these cases that distress you, but would quit your worrying, the discomfort would generally disappear of its own accord.
One result of this kind of worry is that it genders a nervousness that unnecessarily calls up to the mind pictures of a large variety of possible dangers. Who has not met with this nervous species of worrier?
The train enters a tunnel: "What an awful place for a wreck!" Or it is climbing a mountain grade with a deep precipice on one side: "My, if we were to swing off this grade!" I have heard scores of people, who, on riding up the Great Cable Incline of the Mount Lowe Railway, have exclaimed: "What would become of us if this cable were to break?" and they were apparently people of reason and intelligence. The fact is, the cable is so strong and heavy that with two cars crowded to the utmost, their united weight is insufficient to stretch the cable tight, let alone putting any strain upon it sufficient to break it. And most nervous worries are as baseless as this.
"Yet," says some apologist for worries, "accidents do happen. Look at theEastlandin Chicago, and the loss of theTitanic. Railways have wrecks, collisions, and accidents. Horses do run away. Dogs do bite. People do become sick!"
Granted without debate or discussion. But if everybody on board the wrecked vessels had worried for six months beforehand, would their worries have prevented the wrecks? Mind you, I say worry, not proper precaution. The shipping authorities, all railway officials and employees, etc., should be as alert as possible to guard against all accidents. But this can be done without one moment's worry on the part of a solitary human being, and care is as different from worry as gold is from dross, coal from ashes. By all means, take due precautions; study to avoid the possibility of accidents, but do not give worry a place in your mind for a moment.
A twin brother to this health-worrier is the nervous type, who is sure that every dog loose on the streets is going to bite; every horse driven behind is surely going to run away; every chauffeur is either reckless, drunk, or sure to run into a telegraph pole, have a collision with another car, overturn his car at the corner, or run down the crossing pedestrian; every loitering person is a tramp, who is a burglar in disguise; every stranger is an enemy, or at least must be regarded with suspicion. Such worriers always seem to prefer to look on the dark side of the unknown rather than on the bright side. "Think no evil!" is good philosophy to apply to everything, as well as genuine religion—when put into practice. The world is in the control of the Powers of Good, and these seek our good, not our disaster. Have faith in the goodness of the powers that be, and work and live to help make your faith true. The man who sees evil where none exists, will do more to call it into existence than he imagines, and equally true, or even more so, is the converse, that he who sees good where none seems to exist, will call it forth, bring it to the surface.
The teacher, who imagines that all children are mean and are merely waiting for a chance to exercise that meanness, will soon justify his suspicions and the children will become what he imagines them to be. Yet such a teacher often little realizes that it has been his own wicked fears and worries that helped—to put it mildly—the evil assert itself.
A worrying parent is at once an exasperating and a pathetic figure. She—for it is generally the mother—is so undeniably influenced by her love that one can sympathize with her anxiety, yet the confidant of her child, or the unconcerned observer is exasperated as he clearly sees the evil she is creating by her foolish, unnecessary worries.
The worries of parents are protean, as are all other worries, and those herein named must be taken merely as suggestions as to scores of others that might be catalogued and described in detail.
Many mothers worry foolishly because their children do not obey, are not always thoughtful and considerate, and act with wisdom, forgetful that life is the school for learning. If any worrying is to be done, let the parent worry over her own folly in not learning how to teach, or train, her child. Line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little, is the natural procedure with children. It is unreasonable to expect "old heads upon young shoulders." Worry, therefore, that children have not learned before they are taught is as senseless as it is demoralizing. Get down to something practical. I know a mother of a large family of boys and girls. They are as diverse in character and disposition as one might ever find. She is one of the wise, sensible, practical mothers, who acts instead of worrying. For instance, she believes thoroughly in allowing the children to choose their own clothing. It develops judgment, taste, practicability. One of the girls was vain, and always wanted to purchase shoes too small for her, in order that she might have "pretty feet." Each time she brought home small shoes, her mother sent her back with admonitions to secure a larger pair. After this had continued for several times, she decided upon another plan. When the "too small" shoes were brought home, she compelled the girl to wear them, though they pinched and hurt, until they were worn out, and, as she said in telling me the story, "that ended that."
One of her sons was required to get up every morning and light the fire. Very often he was lazy and late so that the fire was not lighted when mother was ready to prepare breakfast. One night he brought home a companion to spend a day or two. The lads frolicked together so that they overslept. When mother got up in the morning, there was no fire. She immediately walked to the foot of the stairs and yelled, "Fire! Fire! Fire!" at the top of her voice. In a few moments, both lads, tousled, half-dressed, and well-scared, rushed downstairs, exclaiming: "Where's the fire? Where's the fire?" "I want it in the stove," was the mother's answer—and "that was the end of that."
The oldest girl became insistent that she be allowed to sit up nights after the others had gone to bed. She would study for awhile and then put her head on her arms and go to sleep. One night her mother waited until she was asleep, went off to bed, and left her. At three o'clock in the morning she came downstairs, lighted lamp in hand, and alarm clock set to go off. As soon as the alarm-bell began to ring, the girl awoke, startled to see her mother standing there with the lighted lamp, herself cold and stiff with the discomfort of her position. "And that was the end of that," said the mother.
Here was common-sense, practical, hard-headed training instead of worry. Bend your sense, your intellect, your time, your energy, to seeking how to train your children, instead of doing the senseless, foolish, inane, and utterly useless thing of worrying about them.
Imagine being the child of an anxious parent, who sees sickness in every unusual move or mood of her boy or girl. A little clearing of the throat—"I'm sure he's going to have croup or diphtheria." The girl unconsciously puts her hand to her brow—"What's the matter with your head, dearie; got a headache?" A lad feels a trifle uncomfortable in his clean shirt and wiggles about—"I'm sure Tom's coming down with fever, he's so restless and he looks so flushed!"
God forbid that I should ever appear to caricature the wise care of a devoted mother. That is not what I aim to do. I seek, with intenseness of purpose, to show the folly, the absurdity of the anxieties, the worries, the unnecessary and unreasonable cares of many mothers. For the moment Fear takes possession of them, some kind of nagging is sure to begin for the child. "Oh, Tom, you mustn't do this," or, "Maggie, my darling, you must be careful of that," and the child is not only nagged, but is thusplaced under bondage to the mother's unnecessary alarm. No young life can suffer this bondage without injury. It destroys freedom and spontaneity, takes away that dash and vigor, that vim and daring that essentially belong to youth, and should be the unhampered heritage of every child. I'd far rather have a boy and girl of mine get sick once in a while—though that is by no means necessary—than have them subjected to the constant fear that they might be sick. And when boys and girls wake up to the full consciousness that their parents' worries are foolish, unnecessary, and self-created, the mental and moral influence upon them is far more pernicious than many even of our wisest observers have perceived.
There never was a boy or girl who was worried over, who was not annoyed, fretted, injured, and cursed by it, instead of being benefited. The benefit received from the love of the parent was in spite of the worry, and not because of it. Worry is a hindrance, a deterrent, a restraint; it is always putting a curbing hand upon the natural exuberance and enthusiasm of youth. It says, "Don't, don't," with such fierce persistence, that it kills initiative, destroys endeavor, murders naturalness, and drives its victims to deception, fraud, and secrecy to gain what they feel to be natural, reasonable and desirable ends.
I verily believe that the parent who forever is saying "Don't" to her children, is as dangerous as a submarine and as cruel as an asphyxiating bomb. Life is forexpression, notrepression. Repression is always a proof that a proper avenue for expression has not yet been found. Quit your "don't-ing," and teach your child to "do" right. Children absolutely are taught to dread, then dislike, and finally to hate their parents when they are refused the opportunity of "doing"—of expressing themselves.
Rather seek to find ways in which they may be active. Give them opportunities for pleasure, for employment, for occupation. And remember this, there is as much distance and difference between "tolerating," "allowing," "permitting" your children to do things, and "encouraging," "fostering" in them the desire to do them, as there is distance between the poles. Don't be a dampener to your children, a discourager, a "don'ter," a sign the moment you appear that they must "quit" something, that they must repress their enthusiasm, their fun, their exuberant frolicsomeness, but let them feel your sympathy with them, your comradeship, your good cheer, that "Father, Mother, is a jolly good fellow," and my life for it, you will doubtless save yourself and them much worry in after years.
Hans Christian Andersen's story ofThe Ugly Ducklingis one of the best illustrations of the uselessness and needlessness of much of the worry of parents with which I am familiar. How the poor mother duck worried because one of her brood was so large and ugly. At first she was willing to accept it, but when everybody else jeered at it, pushed it aside, bit at it, pecked it on the head, and generally abused it, and the turkey-cock bore down upon it like a ship in full sail, and gobbled at it, and its brothers and sisters hunted it, grew more and more angry with it, and wished the cat would get it and swallow it up, she herself wished it far and far away. And as the worries grew around the poor duckling, it ran away. It didn't know enough to have faith in itself and its own future. The result was the worries of others affected it to the extent of urging it to flee. For the time being this enlarged its worries, until at length, falling in with a band of swans, it felt a strange thrill of fellowship with them in spite of their grand and beautiful appearance, and, soaring into the air after them, it alighted into the water, and seeing its own reflection, was filled with amazement and wonder to find itself no longer an ugly duckling but—a swan.
Many a mother, father, family generally, have worried over their ugly duckling until they have driven him, her, out into the world, only to find out later that their duckling was a swan. And while it was good for the swan to find out its own nature, the points I wish to make are that there was no need for all the worry—it was the sign of ignorance, of a want of perception—and further, the swan would have developed in its home nest just as surely as it did out in the world, and would have been saved all the pain and distress its cruel family visited upon it.
There is still another story, which may as well be introduced here, as it applies to the unnecessary worry of parents about their young. In this case, it was a hen that sat on a nest of eggs. When the chickens were hatched, they all pleased the mother hen but one, and he rushed to the nearest pond, and, in spite of her fret, fuss, fume, and worry, insisted upon plunging in. In vain the hen screamed out that he would drown, her unnatural child was resolved to venture, and to the amazement of all, he floated perfectly, for he was a duck instead of a chicken, and his egg was placed under the old hen by mistake.
Mother, father, don't worry about your child. It may be he is a swan; he may be a duck, instead of the creature you anticipated. Control your fretfulness and your worry for it cannot possibly change things. Wait and watch developments and a few days may reveal enough to you to show you how totally unnecessary all your worries would have been. Teach yourself to know that worry is evil thought directed either upon our own bodies or minds, or those of others. Note, I sayevilthought. It is not good thought. Good thought so directed would be helpful, useful, beneficial. This is injurious, harmful, baneful. Evil thought, worry, directs to the person, or to that part of the body considered, an injurious and baneful influence that produces pain, inharmony, unhappiness. It is as if one were to divert a stream of corroding acid upon a sensitive wound, and do it because we wished to heal the wound. Worry never once healed a wound, or cured an ill. It always aggravates, irritates, and, furthermore, helps superinduce the evil the worrier is afraid of. The fact that you worry about these things to which I have referred, that you yield your thoughts to them, and, in your worry, give undue contemplation to them, induces the conditions you wish to avoid or avert. Hence, if you wish your child to be well and strong, brave and courageous, it is the height of cruelty for you to worry over his health, his play, or his exercise. Better by far leave him alone than bring upon him the evils you dread. Who has not observed, again and again, the evil that has come from worrying mothers who were constantly cautioning or forbidding their children to do that which every natural and normal child longs to do? Quit your worrying. Leave your child alone. Better by far let him break a rib, or bruise his nose, than all the time to live in the bondage of your fears.
Elsewhere I have referred to the fact that we often bring upon our loved ones the perils we fear. There is a close connection between our mental states and the objects with which we are surrounded. Or, mayhap, it would be more correct to say that it is our mental condition that shapes the actions of those around us in relation to the things by which they are surrounded. Let me illustrate with an incident which happened in my own observation. A small boy and girl had a nervous, ever worrying mother. She was assured that her boy was bound to come to physical ill, for he was so courageous, so adventuresome, so daring. To her he was the duck instead of the chicken she thought she was hatching out. One day he climbed to the roof of the barn. His sister followed him. The two were slowly, and in perfect security, "inching" along on the comb of the roof, when the mother happened to catch sight of them. With a scream of half terror and half anger, she shouted to them to come downat once!Up to that moment, I had watched both children with comfort, pleasure, and assurance of their perfect safety. Their manifest delight in their elevated position, the pride of the girl in her pet brother's courage, and his scarcely concealed surprise and pleasure that she should dare to follow him, were interesting in the extreme. But the moment that foolish mother's scream rent the air, everything changed instanter. Both children became nervous, the boy started down the roof, where he could drop upon a lower roof to safety. His little sister, however, started down too soon. Her mother's fears unnerved her and she slid, and falling some twenty-five feet or so, broke her arm.
Then—and here was the cruel fatuity of the whole proceeding—the mother began to wail and exclaim to the effect that it was just what she expected. May I be pardoned for calling her a worrying fool. She could not see that it was her very expectation, and giving voice to it, in her hourly worryings and in that command that they come down, that caused the accident. She, herself, alone was to blame; her unnecessary worry was the cause of her daughter's broken arm.
Christ's constant incitement to his disciples was "Be not afraid!" He was fully aware of the fact that Job declared: "The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me."
Hence, worrying mother, curb your worry, kill it, drive it out, foryour child's sake. You claim it is for your child's good that you worry. You are wrong. It is because you are too thoughtless, faithless, and trustless that you worry, and, if you will pardon me,too selfish. If, instead of giving vent to that fear, worry, dread, you exercised your reason and faith a little more, and then self-denial, and refused to give vocal expression to your worry, you could then claim unselfishness in the interest of your child. But to put your fears and worries, your dreads and anxieties, around a young child, destroying his exuberance and joy, surrounding him with the mental and spiritual fogs that beset your own life is neither wise, kind, nor unselfish.
Another serious worry that besets many parents is that pertaining to the courtship or engagement of their children. Here again let me caution my readers not to construe my admonitions into indifference to this important epoch in their child's life. I would have them lovingly, wisely, sagely advise. But there is a vast difference between this, and the uneasy, fretful, nagging worries that beset so many parents and which often lead to serious friction. Remember that it is your child, not you, who has to be suited with a life partner. The girl who may call forth his warmest affection may be the last person in the world you would have chosen, yet you are not the one to be concerned.
In the January, 1916,Ladies' Home Journalthere is an excellent editorial bearing upon this subject, as follows:
A mother got to worrying about the girl to whom her son had become engaged. She was a nice girl, but the mother felt that perhaps she was not of a type to stimulate the son sufficiently in his career. The mother wisely said nothing, however, until two important facts dawned upon her:
First, that possibly her boy was of the order which did not need stimulation. As she reflected upon his nature, his temperament, she arrived at the conclusion that what he required in a life partner might be someone who would prove a poultice rather than a mustard plaster or a fly blister.
This was her first discovery.
The second was not precisely like unto it, but was even more important—that the son, and not the mother, was marrying the girl. The question as to whether or not the girl would suit the mother as a permanent companion was a minor consideration about which she need not vex her soul. The point he had settled for himself was that here, by God's grace, was the one maid for him; and since that had been determined the wise course was for the mother not to waste time and energy bemusing (worrying) herself over the situation, especially as the girl offered no fundamental objections.
Thus the mother, of herself, learned a lesson that many another mother might profitably learn.
How wonderfully in hisSauldoes Robert Browning set forth the opposite course to that of the worrier. Here, the active principle of love and trust are called upon so that it uplifts and blesses its object. David is represented as filled with a great love for Saul, which would bring happiness to him. He strives in every way to make Saul happy, yet the king remains sad, depressed, and unhappy. At last David's heart and his reason grasp the one great fact of God's transcending love, and the poem ends with a burst of rapture. His discovery is that, if his heart is so full of love to Saul, that in his yearning for his good, he would give him everything, what must God's love for him be? Of his own love he cries:
Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss,I would add, to that life of the past, both the future andthis;
I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence,At this moment,—had love but the warrant love's heart todispense.
Then, when God's magnificent love bursts upon him he sings in joy:
—What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? When doors great and small
Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appall?
How utterly absurd, on the face of it, is such a supposition. God having given so much will surely continue to give. His love so far proven so great, itwill never cease.
O! doubting heart of man, of woman, of father, of mother, grieving over the mental and spiritual lapses of a loved one, grasp this glorious fact—God's love far transcends thine own. What thou wouldst do for thy loved one is a minute fraction of what He can do, will do,is doing. Rest in His love. He will not fail thee nor forsake thee; and in His hands all whom thou lovest are safe.
I now approach a difficult part of my subject, yet I do it without trepidation, fear, or worry as to results. There are, to my mind, a few fundamental principles to be considered and observed, and each married couple must learn to fight the battle out for themselves.
Undoubtedly, to most married people, the ideal relationship is where each is so perfectly in accord with the other—they think alike, agree, are as one mentally—that there are no irritations, no differences of opinion, no serious questions to discuss.
Others have a different ideal. They do not object to differences, serious, even, and wide. They are so thorough believers in the sanctity of the individuality of each person—that every individual must live his own life, and thus learn his own lessons, that what they ask is a love large enough, big enough, sympathetic enough, to embrace all differences, and in confidence that the "working out" process will be as sure for one as the other, to rest, content and serene in each other's love in spite of the things that otherwise would divide them.
This mental attitude, however, requires a large faith in God, a wonderful belief in the good that is in each person, and a forbearing wisdom that few possess. Nevertheless, it is well worth striving for, and its possession is more desirable than many riches. And how different the outlook upon life from that of the marital worrier. When a couple begin to live together, they have within themselves the possibilities of heaven or of hell. The balance between the two, however, is very slight. There is only a foot, or less, in difference, between the West and the East on the Transcontinental Divide. I have stood with one foot in a rivulet the waters of which reached the Pacific, and the other in one which reached the Atlantic. The marital divide is even finer than that. It is all in the habit of mind. If one determines that he, she, will guide, boss, direct, control the other, one of two or three things is sure to occur.
I. The one mindwillcontrol the other, and an individual will live some one else's life instead of its own. This is the popular American notion of the life of the English wife. She has been trained during the centuries to recognize her husband as lord and master, and she unquestionably and unhesitatingly obeys his every dictate. Without at all regarding this popular conception as an accurate one, nationally, it will serve the purpose of illustration.
II. The second alternative is one of sullen submission. If one hates to "row," to be "nagged," he, she, submits, but with a bad grace, consumed constantly with an inward rebellion, which destroys love, leads to cowardly subterfuges, deceptions, and separations.
III. The third outcome is open rebellion, and the results of this are too well known to need elucidation—for whatever they may be, they are disastrous to the peace, happiness, and content of the family relationship.
Yet to show how hard it is to classify actual cases in any formal way, let me here introduce what I wrote long ago about a couple whom I have visited many times. It is a husband and wife who are both geniuses—far above the ordinary in several lines. They have money—made by their own work—the wife's as well as the husband's, for she is an architect and builder of fine homes. While they have great affection one for another, there is a constant undertone of worry in their lives. Each is too critical of the other. They worry about trifles. Each is losing daily the sweetness of sympathetic and joyous comradeship because they do not see eye to eye in all things. Where a mutual criticism of one's work is agreed upon, and is mutually acceptable and unirritating, there is no objection to it. Rather should it be a source of congratulation that each is so desirous of improving that criticism is welcomed. But, in many cases, it is a positive and injurious irritant. One meets with criticism, neither kind nor gentle, out in the world. In the home, both man and woman need tenderness, sympathy, comradeship—and if there be weaknesses or failures that are openly or frankly confessed, there should be the added grace and virtue of compassion without any air of pitying condescension or superiority. By all means help each other to mend, to improve, to reach after higher, noble things, but don't do it by the way of personal criticism, advice, remonstrance, fault-finding, worrying. If you do, you'll do far more harm than good in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred. Every human being instinctively, in such position, consciously or unconsciously, places himself in the attitude of saying: "I am what I am! Now recognize that, and leave me alone! My life is mine to learn its lessons in my own way, just the same as yours is to learn your lessons in your way." This worrying about, and of each other has proven destructive of much domestic happiness, and has wrecked many a marital barque, that started out with sails set, fair wind, and excellent prospects.
Don't worry about each other—helpeach other by the loving sympathy that soothes and comforts. Example is worth a million times more than precept and criticism, no matter how lovingly and wisely applied, and few men and women are wise enough to criticise and adviseperpetually, without giving the recipient the feeling that he is being "nagged."
Granted that, from the critic's standpoint, every word said may be true, wise, and just. This does not, by any means, make it wise to say it. The mental and spiritual condition of the recipientmustbe considered as of far more importance than the condition of the giver of the wise exhortations. The latter is all right, he doesn't need such admonitions; the other does. The important question, therefore, should be: "Is he ready to receive them?" If not, if the time is unpropitious, the mental condition inauspicious, better do, say, nothing, than make matters worse. But, unfortunately, it generally happens that at such times the critic is far more concerned at unbosoming himself of his just and wise admonitions than he is as to whether the time is ripe, the conditions the best possible, for the word to be spoken. The sacred writer has something very wise and illuminating to say upon this subject. Solomon says: "A word spoken in due season, how good is it!" Note, however, that it must be spoken "in due season," to be good. The same word spoken out of season may be, and often is, exceedingly bad. Again he says: "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver." But it must befitlyspoken to be worthy to rank with apples of gold.
Reference has already been made toThe Squirrel Cage, by Dorothy Canfield. Better than any book I have read for a long time, it reveals the causes of much of the worry that curses our modern so-called civilized life. These causes are complex and various. They includevanity, undue attention to what our neighbors think of us, a false appreciation of the values of things, and they may all be summed up into what I propose to call—with due acknowledgement to Mrs. Canfield—the Worry of the Squirrel Cage.
I will let the author express her own meaning of this latter term. If the story leading up seems to be long please seek to read it in the light of this expression:[A]
[Footnote A: Reprinted from "The Squirrel-Cage" by Dorothy Canfield ($1.35 net); published by Henry Holt and Company, New York City.]
When Mr. and Mrs. Emery, directly after their wedding in a small Central New York village, had gone West to Ohio, they had spent their tiny capital in building a small story-and-a-half cottage, ornamented with the jig-saw work and fancy turning popular in 1872, and this had been the nucleus of their present rambling, picturesque, many-roomed home. Every step in the long series of changes which had led from its first state to its last had a profound and gratifying significance for the Emerys and its final condition, prosperous, modern, sophisticated, with the right kind of wood work in every room that showed, with the latest, most unobtrusively artistic effects in decoration, represented their culminating well-earned position in the inner circle of the best society of Endbury.
Moreover, they felt that just as the house had been attained with effort, self-denial, and careful calculations, yet still without incurring debt, so their social position had been secured by unremitting diligence and care, but with no loss of self-respect or even of dignity. They were honestly proud of both their house and of their list of acquaintances and saw no reason to regard them as less worthy achievements of an industrious life than their four creditable grown-up children or Judge Emery's honorable reputation at the bar.
The two older children, George and Marietta, could remember those early struggling days with as fresh an emotion as that of their parents. Indeed, Marietta, now a competent, sharp-eyed matron of thirty-two, could not see the most innocuous colored lithograph without an uncontrollable wave of bitterness, so present to her mind was the period when they painfully groped their way out of chromos.
The particular Mrs. Hollister who, at the time the Emerys began to pierce the upper crust, was the leader of Endbury society, had discarded chromos as much as five years before. Mrs. Emery and Marietta, newly admitted to the honor of her acquaintance, wondered to themselves at the cold monotony of her black and white engravings. The artlessness of this wonder struck shame to their hearts when they chanced to learn that the lady had repaid it with a worldly-wise amusement at their own highly-colored waterfalls and snow-capped mountain-peaks. Marietta could recall as piercingly as if it were yesterday, in how crestfallen a chagrin she and her mother had gazed at their parlor after this incident, their disillusioned eyes open for the first time to the futility of its claim to sophistication. As for the incident that had led to the permanent retiring from their table of the monumental salt-and-pepper 'caster' which had been one of their most prized wedding presents, the Emerys refused to allow themselves to remember it, so intolerably did it spell humiliation.
In these quotations the reader has the key to the situation—worry to become as good as one's neighbors, if not better.This is the worry of the squirrel cage.
Lydia is Mrs. Emery's baby girl, her pet, her passionate delight. She has been away to a fine school. She knows nothing of the ancient struggles to attain position and a high place in society. Those struggles were practically over before she appeared on the scene.
On the occasion of her final home-coming her mother makes great preparations to please her, yet the worry and the anxiety, are revealed in her conversation with her older daughter:
'Oh, Marietta, howdoyou suppose the house will seem to Lydia after she has seen so much? I hope she won't be disappointed. I've done so much to it this last year, perhaps she won't like it. And oh, Iwasso tired because we weren't able to get the new sideboard put up in the dining-room yesterday!'
'Really, Mother, you must draw the line about Lydia. She's only human. I guess if the house is good enough for you and father it is good enough for her.'
'That's just it, Marietta—that's just what came over me!Iswhat's good enough for us good enough for Lydia? Won't anything, even the best, in Endbury be a come-down for her?'
The attainments of Mrs. Emery both as to wealth and social position, however, were not reached by her daughter Marietta and her husband, but in the determination to make it appear as if they were, Marietta thus exposes her own life of worry in a talk with her father:
'Keeping up a two-maid and a man establishment on a one-maid income, and mostly not being able to hire the one maid. There aren'tanygirls to be had lately. It means that I have to be the other maid and the man all of the time, and all three, part of the time.' She was starting down the step, but paused as though she could not resist the relief that came from expression. 'And the cost of living—the necessities are bad enough, but the other things—the things you have to have not to be out of everything! I lie awake nights. I think of it in church. I can't think of anything else but the way the expenses mount up. Everybody getting so reckless and extravagant and Iwon'tgo in debt! I'll come to it, though. Everybody else does. We're the only people that haven't oriental rugs now. Why, the Gilberts—and everybody knows how much they still owe Dr. Melton for Ellen's appendicitis, and their grocer told Ralph they owe him several hundred dollars—well, they have just got an oriental rug that they paid a hundred and sixty dollars for. Mrs. Gilbert said they 'justhadto have it, and you can always have what you have to have.' It makes me sick! Our parlor looks so common! And the last dinner party we gave cost—'
Another phase of thesquirrel cage worryis expressed in this terse paragraph:
'Father keeps talking about getting one of those player-pianos, but Mother says they are so new you can't tell what they are going to be. She says they may get to be too common.'
Bye and bye it comes Lydia's turn to decide what place she and her new husband are to take in Endbury society, and here is what one frank, sensible man says about it:
'It may be all right for Marietta Mortimer to kill herself body and soul by inches to keep what bores her to death to have—a social position in Endbury's two-for-a-cent society, but, for the Lord's sake, why do they make such a howling and yelling just at the tree when Lydia's got the tragically important question to decide as to whether that's whatshewants? It's like expecting her to do a problem in calculus in the midst of an earthquake.'
And the following chapter is a graphic presentation as to how Lydia made her choice "in perfect freedom"—oh, the frightful sarcasm of the phrase—during the excitement of the wedding preparations and under the pressure of expensive gifts and the ideas of over enthusiastic "society" friends.
Lydia now began her own "squirrel-cage" existence, even her husband urges her into extravagance in spite of her protest by saying, "Nothing's too good for you. And besides, it's an asset. The mortgage won't be so very large. And if we're in it, we'll just have to live up to it. It'll be a stimulus."
One of the sane characters of the book is dear, lovable, gruff Mr. Melton, who is Lydia's godfather, and her final awakening is largely due to him. One day he finds Lydia's mother upstairs sick-a-bed, and thus breaks forth to his godchild:
'About your mother—I know without going upstairs that she is floored with one or another manifestation of the great disease ofsocial-ambitionitis. But calm yourself. It's not so bad as it seems when you've got the right doctor, I've practiced for thirty years among Endbury ladies. They can't spring anything new on me. I've taken your mother through doily fever induced by the change from tablecloths to bare tops, through portiere inflammation, through afternoon tea distemper, throughart-nouveauprostration and mission furniture palsy, not to speak of a horrible attack of acute insanity over the necessity of having her maids wear caps. I think you can trust me, whatever dodge the old malady is working on her.'
And later in speaking of Lydia's sister he affirms:
'Your sister Marietta is not a very happy woman. She has too many of your father's brains for the life she's been shunted into. She might be damming up a big river with a finely constructed concrete dam, and what she is giving all her strength to is trying to hold back a muddy little trickle with her bare hands. The achievement of her life is to give on a two-thousand-a-year income the appearance of having five thousand like your father. She does it; she's a remarkably forceful woman, but it frets her. She ought to be in better business, and she knows it, though she won't admit it.'
Oh, the pity of it, the woe of it, the horror of it, for it is one of the curses of our present day society and is one of the causes of many a man's and woman's physical and mental ruin. In the words of our author elsewhere:
They are killing themselves to get what they really don't want and don't need, and are starving for things they could easily have by just putting out their hands.
Where life's struggle is reduced to this kind of thing, there is little compensation, hence we are not surprised to read that:
Judge Emery was in the state in which of late the end of the day's work found him—overwhelmingly fatigued. He had not an ounce of superfluous energy to answer his wife's tocsin, while she was almost crying with nervous exhaustion. That Lydia's course ran smooth through a thousand complications was not accomplished without an incalculable expenditure of nervous force on her mother's part. Dr. Melton had several times of late predicted that he would have his old patient back under his care again. Judge Emery, remembering this prophecy, was now moved by his wife's pale agitation to a heart-sickening mixture or apprehension for her and of recollection of his own extreme discomfort whenever she was sick.
Yet in spite of this intense tension, she was unable to stop—felt she must go on, until finally, a breakdown intervened and she was compelled to lay by.
On another page a friend tells of his great-aunt's experience:
'She told me that all through her childhood her family was saving and pulling together to build a fine big house. They worked along for years until, when she was a young lady, they finally accomplished it; built a big three-story house that was the admiration of the countryside. Then they moved in. And it took the womenfolks every minute of their time, and more to keep it clean and in order; it cost as much to keep it up, heated, furnished, repaired, painted and everything the way a fine house should be, as their entire living used to cost. The fine big grounds they had laid out to go with the mansion took so much time to—'
Finally Lydia herself becomes awakened, startled as she sees what everybody is trying to make her life become and she bursts out to her sister:
'I'm just frightened of—everything—what everybody expects me to do, and to go on doing all my life, and never have any time but to just hurry faster and faster, so there'll be more things to hurry about, and never talk about anything butthings!' She began to tremble and look white, and stopped with a desperate effort to control herself, though she burst out at the sight of Mrs. Mortimer's face of despairing bewilderment. 'Oh, don't tell me you don't see at all what I mean. I can't say it! But youmustunderstand. Can't we somehow all stop—now!And start over again! You get muslin curtains and not mend your lace ones, and Mother stop fussing about whom to invite to that party—that's going to cost more than he can afford, Father says—it makes mesickto be costing him so much. And not fuss about having clothes just so—and Paul have our house built little and plain, so it won't be so much work to take care of it and keep it clean. I would so much rather look after it myself than to have him kill himself making money so I can hire maids that youcan't—you say yourself you can't—and never having any time to see him. Perhaps if we did, other people might, and we'd all have more time to like things that make us nicer to like.
And when her sister tried to comfort her she continued:
'You do see what I mean! You see how dreadful it is to look forward to just that—being so desperately troubled over things that don't really matter—and—and perhaps having children, and bringing them to the same thing—when there must be so many things that do matter!'
Then, to show how perfectly her sister understood, the author makes that wise and perceptive woman exclaim:
'Mercy! Dr. Melton's right! She's perfectly wild with nerves!We must get her married as soon as ever we can!'
Lydia gives a reception. Here is part of the description:
Standing as they were, tightly pressed in between a number of different groups, their ears were assaulted by a disjointed mass of stentorian conversation that gave a singular illusion as if it all came from one inconceivably voluble source, the individuality of the voices being lost in the screaming enunciation which, as Mrs. Sandworth had pointed out, was a prerequisite of self-expression under the circumstances.
They heard: 'For over a month and the sleeves were too see you again at Mrs. Elliott's I'm pouring there from four I've got to dismiss one with plum-colored bows all along five dollars a week and the washing out and still impossible! I was there myself all the time and they neither of thirty-five cents a pound for the most ordinary ferns and red carnations was all they had, and we thought it rather skimpy under the brought up in one big braid and caught down with at Peterson's they were pink and white with—' … 'Oh, no, Madeleine! that was at the Burlingame's.' Mrs. Sandworth took a running jump into the din and sank from her brother's sight, vociferating: 'The Petersons had them of old gold, don't you remember, with little—'
The doctor, worming his way desperately through the masses of femininity, and resisting all attempts to engage him in the local fray, emerged at length into the darkened hall where the air was, as he told himself in a frenzied flight of imagination, less like a combination of a menagerie and a perfume shop. Here, in a quiet corner, sat Lydia's father alone. He held in one hand a large platter piled high with wafer-like sandwiches, which he was consuming at a Gargantuan rate, and as he ate, he smiled to himself.
'Well, Mr. Ogre,' said the doctor, sitting down beside him with a gasp of relief; 'let a wave-worn mariner into your den, will you?'
Provided with an auditor, Judge Emery's smile broke into an open laugh. He waved the platter toward the uproar in the next rooms: 'A boiler factory ain't in it with woman, lovely woman, is it?' he put it to his friend.
'Gracious powers! There's nothing to laugh at in that exhibition!' the doctor reproved him, with an acrimonious savagery. 'I don't know which makes me sicker; to stay in there and listen to them, or come out here and find you thinking they'refunny!'
They are funny!' insisted the Judge tranquilly. 'I stood by the door and listened to the scraps of talk I could catch, till I thought I should have a fit. I never heard anything funnier on the stage.'
'Looky here, Nat,' the doctor stared up at him angrily, 'they're not monkeys in a zoo, to be looked at only on holidays and then laughed at! They're the other half of a whole that we're half of, and don't you forget it! Why in the world should you think it funny for them to do this tomfool trick all winter and have nervous prostration all summer to pay for it? You'd lock up amanas a dangerous lunatic if he spent his life so. What they're like, and what they do with their time and strength concerns us enough sight more than what the tariff is, let me tell you.'
'I admit that what your wife is like concerns you a whole lot!' The Judge laughed good-naturedly in the face of the little old bachelor. 'Don't commence jumping on the American woman so! I won't stand it! She's the noblest of her sex!'
'Do you know why I am bald?' said Dr. Melton, running his hand over his shining dome.
'If I did, I wouldn't admit it,' the Judge put up a cautious guard, 'because I foresee that whatever I say will be used as evidence against me.'
'I've torn out all my hair in desperation at hearing such men as you claim to admire and respect and wish to advance the American woman. You don't give enough thought to her—real thought—from one year's end to another to know whether you think she has an immortal soul or not!'
Later Lydia's husband insists that they give a dinner.
It was to be a large dinner—large, that is, for Endbury—of twenty covers, and Lydia had never prepared a table for so many guests. The number of objects necessary for the conventional setting of a dinner table appalled her. She was so tired, and her attention was so fixed on the complicated processes going on uncertainly in the kitchen, that her brain reeled over the vast quantity of knives and forks and plates and glasses needed to convey food to twenty mouths on a festal occasion. They persistently eluded her attempts to marshal them into order. She discovered that she had put forks for the soup—that in some inexplicable way at the plate destined for an important guest there was a large kitchen spoon of iron, a wild sort of whimsical humor rose in her from the ferment of utter fatigue and anxiety. When Paul came in, looking very grave, she told him with a wavering laugh, 'If I tried as hard for ten minutes to go to Heaven as I've tried all day to have this dinner right, I'd certainly have a front seat in the angel choir. If anybody here to-night is not satisfied, it'll be because he's harder to please than St. Peter himself.'
During the evening:
Lydia seemed to herself to be in an endless bad dream. The exhausting efforts of the day had reduced her to a sort of coma of fatigue through which she felt but dully the successive stabs of the ill-served unsuccessful dinner. At times, the table, the guests, the room itself, wavered before her, and she clutched at her chair to keep her balance. She did not know that she was laughing and talking gaily and eating nothing. She was only conscious of an intense longing for the end of things, and darkness and quiet.
When it was all over and her husband was compelled to recognize that it had been a failure, his mental attitude is thus expressed:
He had determined to preserve at all costs the appearance of the indulgent, non-critical, over-patient husband that he intensely felt himself to be. No force, he thought grimly, shutting his jaws hard, should drag from him a word of his real sentiments. Fanned by the wind of this virtuous resolution, his sentiments grew hotter and hotter as he walked about, locking doors and windows, and reviewing bitterly the events of the evening. If he was to restrain himself from saying, he would at least allow himself the privilege of feeling all that was possible to a man deeply injured.
And that night Lydia felt for the "first time the quickening to life of her child. And during all that day, until then, she had forgotten that she was to know motherhood." Can words more forcefully depict theworry of the squirrel-cagethan this—that an unnecessary dinner, given in unnecessary style, at unnecessary expense, to visitors to whom it was unnecessary should have driven from her thought, and doubtless seriously injured, the new life that she was so soon to give to the world?
Oh, men and women of divine descent and divine heritage, quit your squirrel-cage stage of existence. Is life to be one mere whirling around of the cage of useless toil or pleasure, of mere imagining that you are doing something? Work with an object. Know your object, that it is worthy the highest endeavor of a human being, and then pursue it with a divine enthusiasm that no obstacle can daunt, an ardor that no weariness can quench. Then it is you will begin to live. There is no life inworry. Worry is a waste of life. If you are a worrier, that is a proof you (in so far as you worry) do not appreciate the value of your own life, for a worthy object, a divine enthusiasm, a noble ardor are in themselves the best possible preventives against worry. They dignify life above worry. Worry is undignified, petty, paltry. Where you know you have something to do worth doing, you are conscious of the Divine Benediction, and who can worry when the smile of God rests upon him? This is a truism almost to triteness, and yet how few fully realize it. It is the unworthy potterers with life, the dabblers in life-stuff, those who blind themselves to their high estate, those who are unsure of their footing who worry. The true aristocrat is never worried about his position; the orator convinced of the truth of his message worries not as to how it will be received; the machinist sure of his plans hesitates not in the construction of his machinery; the architect assured of his accuracy pushes on his builders without hesitancy or question, fear, or alarm; the engineer knowing his engine and his destination has no heart quiver as he handles the lever. It is the doubter, the unsure, the aimless, the dabbler, the frivolous, the dilettante, the uncertain that worry. How nobly Browning set this forth in his Epilogue:
What had I on earth to doWith the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel—Being—Who?One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,Never doubted clouds would break,Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,Sleep to wake.No, at noonday in the bustle of man's worktimeGreet the unseen with a cheer!Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,'Strive and thrive!' cry 'Speed,—fight on, fare everThere as here!'
And this is not "mere poetry." Or rather it is because it is "mere poetry" that it isreal life. Browning had nearly seventy years of it. He knew. Where there are those to whom "God has whispered in the ear," there is no uncertainty, no worry. The musician who knows his instrument, knows his music, knows his key, and knows his time to play never hesitates, never falters, never worries. With tone clear, pure, strong, and certain, he sends forth his melodies or harmonies into the air. Cannot you, in your daily life, be a true and sure musician? Cannot you becertain—absolutely, definitely certain—of your right to play the tune of life in the way you have it marked out before you, and then go ahead and play! Play, in God's name, as God's and man's music-maker.