Why Worry?, George Lincoln Walton [bts books to read .TXT] 📗

whose occupation keeps him indoors all day should make special effort to pass some time in the open air, if possible walking or driving to and from his place of business, and taking at least a stroll in the evening.

As more than one writer has suggested, the best resource is the fad. The fad will prove an inestimable boon after withdrawing from active work, but it should be commenced long before one discontinues business, else the chances are that he will never take it up, but will fret away his time like the average man who retires from an occupation which has engrossed his attention.

The fad should not be pursued too strenuously, or its charm is lost. A lady once told me that she had given up studying flowers because she found she could not master botany in the time at her disposal. Another sees no use in taking up history unless he can become an authority on some epoch. Another declines to study because he can never overtake the college graduate. But one of the best informed men of my acquaintance had no college education. One of his fads was history, with which he was far more familiar than any but the exceptional college man, outside the teachers of that branch of learning.

The usefulness of the fad does not depend upon the perfection attained in its pursuit, but upon the pleasure in its pursuit, and upon the diversion of the mind from its accustomed channels. The more completely one learns to concentrate his thoughts on an avocation, the more enthusiasm and effectiveness he can bring to bear on his vocation in its turn. A fad that occupies the hands, such as carpentering, turning, or photography, is peculiarly useful if one’s taste runs in that direction.

One handicap in cultivating the fad is the lack of interest on the part of our associates, but if we become genuinely interested in any fad that is at all worth while, we shall inevitably add new acquaintances likely to prove at least as interesting as those of our present friends, who have no thoughts outside their daily round of toil. The more fads one cultivates, so long as he avoids the obsession to obtrude them at all times and places, the more interesting he will, in his turn, become to others.

The over-solicitude that defeats its own end, in the case of a parent, has been admirably portrayed by Arthur Benson in “Beside Still Waters,”— “there was nothing in the world that he more desired than the company and the sympathy of his children; but he had, beside this, an intense and tremulous sense of his responsibility toward them. He attached an undue importance to small indications of character, and thus the children were seldom at ease with their father, because he rebuked them constantly, and found frequent fault, doing almost violence to his tenderness, not from any pleasure in censoriousness, but from a terror, that was almost morbid, of the consequences of the unchecked development of minute tendencies.”

Something must be left to natural growth, and to fortune, even in such important matters as the rearing of children.

 

XII.

THE WORRIER ON HIS TRAVELS

After all, is it not a part of the fine art of living to take the enjoyment of the moment as it comes without lamenting that it is not something else?

LILIAN WHITING: Land of Enchantment.

 

In no phase of life is the worrying and the “fussy” habit more noticeable than in travel. This is, perhaps, partly because the lack of self-confidence, which so often unsettles the worrier, is peculiarly effective when he has relinquished the security of his accustomed anchorage. This applies surely to the over-solicitous attention paid by the traveler to the possible dangers of rail and sea. Here is a verse from Wallace Irwin:

“‘Suppose that this here vessel,’ says the skipper with a groan, ‘Should lose ‘er bearin’s, run away and bump upon a stone; Suppose she’d shiver and go down when save ourselves we could’nt.’ The mate replies, ‘Oh, blow me eyes! Suppose agin she shouldn’t?’”

A common direction taken by the worrying habit, in the traveler, is that of taking in advance each step of the journey, preparing for every contingency, and suffering beforehand every imaginable hardship and inconvenience. I do not vouch for the story (though I can match it without going far afield) of the gentleman who abandoned his trip from Paris to Budapesth because he found he would be delayed in Vienna six hours, “too long time to wait in the station, and not long enough to go to the hotel.” It is the imperative duty of every traveler to discover interests which shall tide him over a few hours’ delay wherever it may occur.

It is by no means a waste of time to familiarize ourselves with the geography at least of our own country; to know the situation and appearance of every city of importance, and to know something about the different railroads besides their initials, and their rating in the stock market. Again, if we take up the study of the trees, flowers and birds, with the aid of the admirable popular works now available, we shall not only view the scenery with new eyes, but shall welcome, rather than be driven to despair, by a breakdown in the woods.

It is a mistake to shun our fellow-travelers, from whom we should rather try to learn something. This is a solace in traveling alone, for the boon companion may handicap us in cultivating new acquaintances and gaining new impressions. Though the main object of recreation is diversion from the daily round of thought, the fact need not be lost sight of that the busy man will find his practical interests furthered, rather than hindered, by a little widening of the horizon. Nor should he forget, meantime, the admonition of Seneca that if he would wish his travels delightful he must first make himself delightful.

It is inevitable that uncomfortable, as well as agreeable, experiences occur in travel. But the man who spends his time and thought in avoiding the one and seeking the other is steadily forging chains whose gall shall one day surpass the discomforts of a journey around the world. Arthur Benson in “Beside Still Waters” says that Hugh learned one thing at school, namely, that the disagreeable was not necessarily the intolerable. Some of us would do well to go back to school and learn this over again. I know of only two ways by which the discomforts of travel can be avoided. One is to ignore them, the other to stay at home.

A fellow traveler told me that on one occasion, in the presence of a beautiful bit of mountain scenery, he overheard two ladies in anxious consultation comparing, article by article, the corresponding menus of two rival hotels. The fact that three varieties of fish were offered at one, while only two were offered at the other, opened so animated a discussion of quantity as opposed to probable quality that the listener discretely withdrew.

A lady on the Florida express, after reading a novel all day with an occasional interim, during which she gazed through her lorgnette with bored and anxious air, finally said to her companion, “I have not seen a single estate which compares to those in Brookline.”

Among the varieties of needless worry imposed upon the traveler by the insistent habit, none is more common, or more easily overcome, than the refusal to sleep unless noise and light are quite shut out. If the sufferer make of his insistent habit a servant, rather than a master, and instead of reiterating “I must have quiet and darkness,” will confidently assert, “I must get over this nonsense,” he will speedily learn that freedom from resentment, and a good circulation of air, are more conducive to sleep than either darkness or silence.

The best drug for the sleepless traveler is the �quo animo of Cicero.

 

XIII.

THE WORRIER AT THE TABLE

These little things are great to little man.

GOLDSMITH: The Traveller.

 

The insistent habit of mind is nowhere more noticeable than in connection with the food. I have seen a hotel habitu�, apparently sane, who invariably cut, or broke, his bread into minute particles, and minutely inspected each before placing it in his mouth. If this were a book of confessions, I should have myself to plead guilty, among worse things, to having avoided mince pie for weeks after encountering among other ingredients of this delicacy, a piece of broken glass.

Not infrequently the obsessive diner so long hesitates before giving his final order that the waiter brings the wrong dish. The insistent thought now replaces the doubting folly, and the diner would as soon think of eating grass as the article offered. I have known him impatiently to leave the table under these circumstances, and to play the ostentatious martyr, rather than partake of the food he had at the outset given weighty consideration. I have seen another omit his lunch because water had been spilled upon the cloth, and still another leave the dining-car, with the announcement that he would forego his meal because informed by the conductor that men’s shirt waists without coats were taboo.

The obsessive of this type may by training even reach the point of seeing the amusing instead of the pathetic side of the picture when, in the course of his travels, his request for “a nice bit of chicken, cut thin,” is transmitted to the kitchen as—“One chick.”

One day, with pride, I called the attention of my easy-going friend to the fact that I was eating a dish I had not ordered. He quietly remarked that the next step was to eat it and say nothing! Another friend has this motto in his dining-room: “Eat what is set before you and be thankful.” His children will open their eyes when they find others, less reasonably reared, demanding that the potatoes be changed because they are sprinkled with parsley, that a plate be replaced because it has had a piece of cheese upon it, or that the salad of lettuce and tomato be removed in favor of one with tomato alone.

A lady recently told me of breakfasting with a foreign sojourner in America, who upon being offered the contents of an egg broken into a glass, was not satisfied with declining it, but felt impelled also to express his extreme disgust at this method of serving it, fortunately to the amusement, rather than to the annoyance of his hostess.

“After this, know likewise,” says Epictetus, “that you are a brother too; and that to this character it belongs to make concessions, to be easily persuaded, to use gentle language, never to claim for yourself any non-essential thing, but cheerfully to give up these to be repaid by a larger share of things essential. For consider what it is, instead of a lettuce, for instance, or a chair, to procure for yourself a good temper. How great an advantage gained!”

The insistent desire to have a certain degree and character of appetite not infrequently leads to consulting the physician. Still more common is the obsession that the appetite must be gratified, the supposition being that the desire for food is, in the growing child or in the adult, an infallible guide to the amount needed, though it is a matter of common knowledge that this is not true of infants or of domestic animals. If one leaves the table hungry he soon forgets it unless inordinately self-centered, and he has no more desire to return than to go back to bed and finish the nap so reluctantly discontinued in the morning.

I have heard the theory advanced by an anxious forecaster of future ills, that all unnecessary food, if packed away as adipose tissue,