HABITUAL HURRY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXII, Issue V, 4 February 1899, Page 158

HABITUAL HURRY.

The number of sudden deaths which occur every year as a consequence of running to railway trains and ferryboats is not inconsiderable. The victims are mostly persons middle-aged or older, who, without knowing it, have some disease of the heart. This kind of over-exertion, however, does less harm than the common habit of being continually in a hurry. A habit which keeps the nervous system at a perpetual tension leads to excessive vital waste, undue susceptibility to disease, and in extreme cases, to nervous exhaustion. Under its influence persons naturally amiable are transformed into petulant and noisy scolds. The woman who is a wife and mother is peculiarly liable to this habit; she has so much to do and so little time in which to do it, in these days when so many outside things crowd upon her domestic duties. There is no doubt that hurry claims ten victims where hard work kills one. The man of business suffers in much the same manner. The hurried breakfast and the hurried skimming of the morning paper are but the beginning of a hurried day. Yet it is unsafe for him to act in a hurry, or in the spirit generated by it. The uncertainties of his calling make entire self-control of prime importance. School children are victims of the same evil. They must be at school exactly on time. But in thousands of cases the family arrangements are not such as to favour punctuality. The child is allowed to sit up late," and so is late at breakfast: or the breakfast itself is late, and the child must hurry through it. and then hurry off. halffed and fully fretted, dreading tardiness and the teacher's displeasure. Robust children may work off the effect amid the sports of the day. but many others are injured for life." Occasional hurry is hardly to be avoided, society being what it is: but the habit of hurry should be guarded against as one of the surest promoters of ill-temper and ill-health. If necessary, less work should be done: but in many cases nothing is needed but a wiser economy of time. Some of the worst victims' of hurry are men who dally with their work until time presses them, and then crowd themselves into a fever, pitying themselves meanwhile because they are so sadly driven.