against our sacred, school system?" Education is in a hurry. Because
she fails in fifteen years to do what half the time should accomplish
by better methods, she should not be too boastful. Incompetence is not
always a reason for pride. And they hurry the children into a hundred
textbooks, then into ill-health, then into the colleges, then into a
diploma, then into life,--with a dazed mind, untrained and unfitted for
the real duties of living.

Hurry is the deathblow to calmness, to dignity, to poise. The old-time
courtesy went out when the new-time hurry came in. Hurry is the father
of dyspepsia. In the rush of our national life, the bolting of food has
become a national vice. The words "Quick Lunches" might properly be
placed on thousands of headstones in our cemeteries. Man forgets that
he is the only animal that dines; the others merely feed. Why does he
abrogate his right to dine and go to the end of the line with the mere
feeders? His self-respecting stomach rebels, and expresses its
indignation by indigestion. Then man has to go through life with a
little bottle of pepsin tablets in his vest-pocket. He is but another
victim to this craze for speed. Hurry means the breakdown of the
nerves. It is the royal road to nervous prostration.

Everything that is great in life is the product of slow growth; the
newer, and greater, and higher, and nobler the work, the slower is its
growth, the surer is its lasting success. Mushrooms attain their full
power in a night; oaks require decades. A fad lives its life in a few
weeks; a philosophy lives through generations and centuries. If you are
sure you are right, do not let the voice of the world, or of friends,
or of family swerve you for a moment from your purpose. Accept slow
growth if it must be slow, and know the results _must_ come, as
you would accept the long, lonely hours of the night,--with absolute