THE DANGERS OF HABITUAL HURRY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 7, 2 December 1892, Page 15

THE DANGERS OF HABITUAL HURRY.

The number of sudden deaths which occur every year ac a consequence of running to catch trains, trams, and 'bases is not inconsiderable. The victims are mostly persons, middle-aged or older, who have some disease of the heart. This kind of over-exertion, however, does less harm than the common habit of being continually in a harry. A habit wbich keeps tbe nervous system at a perpetual tension leads to excessive vital wastt, undue susceptibility to disease, and, in extreme cases, to nervous exhauettion. Under its influence persons naturally amiable axe transformed into petulant and noisy scolds. Tbe woman who is a wife and mother is peculiarly liable to this habit ; she has so much to do and bo little time in which to do it in these days when so man; outside things crowd npon 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 hnrried breakfast and the harried skimming of tbe morning paper are but the beginning of a hurried day. Yet it is unsafe for him to act in a hurry, or in tbe 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 a* school exactly to 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, half fed 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 tbe 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, — Exchange.