A Worrying Woman
“I’m awfully worried this morning,” said one woman. “What is it?” “Why, I thought of something to worry about last night, and now I can’t remember it.”
A famous actress once said: “Worry is the foe of all beauty.” She might have added: “It is the foe to all health.”
“It seems so heartless in me, if I do not worry about my children,” said one mother.
Women nurse their troubles, as they do their babies. “Troubles grow larger,” said Lady Holland, “by nursing.”
The White Knight who carried about a mousetrap, lest he be troubled with mice upon his journeys, was not unlike those who anticipate their burdens.
“He grieves,” says Seneca, “more than is necessary, who grieves before it is necessary.”
“My children,” said a dying man, “during my long life I have had a great many troubles, most of which never happened.” A prominent business man in Philadelphia said that his father worried for twenty-five years over an anticipated misfortune which never arrived.
We try to grasp too much of life at once; since we think of it as a whole, instead of living one day at a time. Life is a mosaic, and each tiny piece must be cut and set with skill, first one piece, then another.
A clock would be of no use as a time-keeper if it should become discouraged and come to a standstill by calculating its work a year ahead, as the clock did in Jane Taylor’s fable. It is not the troubles of to-day, but those of to-morrow and next week and next year, that whiten our heads, wrinkle our faces, and bring us to a standstill.
“There is such a thing,” said Uncle Eben, “as too much foresight. People get to figuring what might happen year after next, and let the fire go out and catch their death of cold, right where they are.”
Nervous prostration is seldom the result of present trouble or work, but of work and trouble anticipated. Mental exhaustion comes to those who look ahead, and climb mountains before reaching them. Resolutely build a wall about to-day, and live within the inclosure. The past may have been hard, sad, or wrong,—but it is over.
Why not take a turn about? Instead of worrying over unforeseen misfortune, set out with all your soul to rejoice in the unforeseen blessings of all your coming days. “I find the gayest castles in the air that were ever piled,” says Emerson, “far better for comfort and for use than the dungeons in the air that are daily dug and caverned out by grumbling, discontented people.”
What is this world but as you take it? Thackeray calls the world a looking-glass that gives back the reflection of one’s own face. “Frown at it, and it will look sourly upon you; laugh at it, and it is a jolly companion.”
“There is no use in talking,” said a woman. “Every time I move, I vow I’ll never move again. Such neighbors as I get in with! Seems as though they grow worse and worse.” “Indeed?” replied her caller; “perhaps you take the worst neighbor with you when you move.”
“In the sudden thunder-storm of Independence Day,” says a news correspondent, “we were struck by the contrast between two women, each of whom had had some trying experience with the weather. One came through the rain and hail to take refuge at the railway station, under the swaying and uncertain shelter of an escorting man’s umbrella. Her skirts were soaked to the knees, her pink ribbons were limp, the purple of the flowers on her hat ran in streaks down the white silk. And yet, though she was a poor girl and her holiday finery must have been relatively costly, she made the best of it with a smile and cheerful words. The other was well sheltered; but she took the disappointment of her hopes and the possibility of a little spattering from a leaky window with frowns and fault-finding.”
“Cries little Miss Fret,
In a very great pet:
‘I hate this warm weather; it’s horrid to tan!
It scorches my nose,
And it blisters my toes,
And wherever I go I must carry a fan.’
“Chirps little Miss Laugh:
‘Why, I couldn’t tell half
The fun I am having this bright summer day!
I sing through the hours,
I cull pretty flowers,
And ride like a queen on the sweet-smelling hay.’”
Happily a new era has of late opened for our worried housekeepers, who spend their time in “the half-frantic dusting of corners, spasmodic sweeping, impatient snatching or pushing aside obstacles in the room, hurrying and skurrying upstairs and down cellar.” “It is not,” says Prentice Mulford, “the work that exhausts them,—it is the mental condition they are in that makes so many old and haggard at forty.” All that is needful now to ease up their burdens is to go to