The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1906-10-28
NO GOOD AT WORRYING.
Moved by This verdict, MIR. BiIltOps Ven
lures on q Few Remarks.


You're no good at ~worryin.' Mrs.
Billions says to me, and MIR. Billtops
admitted, that is true, I never was
much Of a hand to worry.
Just now we've had about half tho
house torn up while the men were kalso-
mining some Of the ceilings. and that
sort of a job does make an awful meas.
II l had my way about IL l never would
have a thing don to a house while l lived
in it.
I'D let the ceilings show patches from
water leaked through from overhead till
they looked like the first efforts in fresco
work Of a prentice artist who used diluted
mud for paint. but l never would have
them touched. II the ceilings didn't fall
dow I'd let EN- stay just that way as long
as l lived in the house, for / don't like to be
disturbed.
But those ceilings certainly were bad,
and Mrs. Billtops said they ought to be
done. and of course l agreed, and 40 for
some days now we've been all torn up.
with kalsomine scattered everywhere and
tracked all over the house. 1t vas this
state of affairs that prompted Mrs. Bill
tops's remark about me.
Just think she says as she surveyed
the furniture piled up in other rooms after
the men had gone for the day. just Think
We're going through all this now and we're
going to move a year from new. and then
we'll have to go through it Al SSsn.
! Yes. says l. and just as likely as not
[ two or three years from that well move
again, and then there'l be more rouble.'
It's then that Mrs. Billtops says TO me.
Ezra, you're no good at worrying
And that's a fact. | never borrowed
A-1aII, aha ona thip1 that vOIa Oan alUyn We
borrow, however tight the money market.
/ never worry over anything that can't
be helped.
sOf course, there's a danger here; we
can get this anti-worry habit in too pro-
nounced a form, we can persuade ourselves
that everything belongs in the can't he
helped category and so degenerate into
l~istIess don't care folks. II we amount to
anything and are entitled 10 get along with
out worry we've got to keep our end up,
and am not negleceful l don't permit myself
70 worry. take a cheerful view.
But I'd hate. to have you think because
/ say that of myself that Mrs. Billtops 10 a
worrier, because she isn't. II I'm not taking
up too much OF YOU time l would say right
here that / have never yet met anybody
that didn't worry some, and, as a matter
Of fact, | suppos a little worrying Is q
healthful irritant for us, but there s different
ways of worrying.
Some IOlhS CdTTy JuctE WOfIIGb aDOue
with them all the time and worry and dis
| tress everybody about them; and hen there
are some people that keep their worries to
! themselves, if they a any, and put on q
good front and go about with smiling faces;
I these last thereby gaining strength to con-
uuer their troubles and by the same effort
comforting a blessing on all the rest OF
mankind.
at is to this last named GLASS that
Mrs. Billtops belongs, a oma OF indomit-
able courage, and il she has anything to
| worry over she never brings 1t out In public.
| At home or abroad she sweeps around un-
daunted, ever smiling, cheerful, helpful and
s~ympathetic. ever bearing the troubles and
worries of others who lay them upon her
as though she had lone Of her own.
But the fact is that we all have our
troubles and-if ! am not OBTAINING you
too long--it is a relief to us to tell them TO
somebody; we all like to have somebody
that we can talk to. And what H. more
natural than that Mrs. Billtops should come
to me, proud to listen, with her troubles,
though chemically cheerful as l am-really,
I don't know but what I'll have to take on
a little worry about something, | don't
know but what I'm getting too cheerful,
too easy-though, chronically. cheerful as
lam, / say lam apt to make light of them.
(which perhaps | ought not to do, even
about such prospective troubles as those OF
the moving one year or two or three ear
hence. For as l look back l realize-as,
indeed, l have always known-that in what
ever measure Of success we may have at
tanned she has been always the handspring,
TO her belongs the credit.
still l should say, II l might do 90
without ~betraying undue vanity, that to
the partnership capital ! have contributed,
I think, something at least In my psf
a~iatAntlv 0ptimistic cha0rfulness.'