Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1921-08-29
AS ONE WOMAN SEES IT
City Victim Of the Hurry Habit Gets
Rid Of II In the Country and
Has Chance to Appre.
ciate Beauty
By SARAH ID. LONRIE


shown how you began to hurry and ended
up insane or n murderer or thief or
polygamst or a wife beater. But the book
did not say what made you hurry
A friend of mine once remarked to me
that there were only two kinds Of hurry.
You either hurry away from a thing or
hurry to thing. II you hurry away from
thing 1t is because you have too much
of it; IL you hurry to a thing 1t is because
you have too little Of it.
A man / know, who can no longer see
whether his shoes need backing without
bending over. also contided TO me that he
had simplified his life by one single COM
mandment:
Never hurry, and thou shalt live long on
the land which thou hast earned by the
sweat of thy brow"
That commandment is much easier to
keep twenty five miles from railroad than
five minutes walk from one. For the
reason that no one who habitually lives
twenty five miles from n railroad knows
what hurry is.
T WOULD not live always twenty five
l. miles from n place where trains arrive
and depart more or less on time, but there
is no doubt that six weeks of the slow
rhythm of remote countryside do give
you sane view of time and your relation
10 It.
At first you rebel against the procrastina-
tion of every one. You have heralded your
coming by giving a program of work and
dates of accomplishment but on arriving
you find nothing about the farm is so far
along as you feel you had right to expect;
nothing is quite finished in the garden,
nothing is quite ready to begin full tide
of housekeeping about the house. What
have they been doing? How could they be
so slow? What did they mean by being so
negligent?
With all the left lover hurry in you, you
begin to make up for lost time, You turn
in yourself and hustle every one all along
the line, or try to. by brightly collecting
promises Of work, of instant delivery, Of
create a kind Of furry of labor that looks
like the real thing until the veil is lifted on
the farce by the best prOmiser not turning
up and the old wheelbarrow going to smash
under stone much too large for its tot
terry. worn legs. and drought making the
buckwheat planting n sheer waste. and the
tile pipes for the new drains being stalled
at railroad junction in the next county,
and the man who was engaged to do the
porch roof going on a fishing trip of five
days instead-in fact, your schedule goes to
pieces because in the end you go to pieces
and become lax from sheer inability to run
while others saunter, If for no better reason
than that you look silly and hot and
important and they look SO wise and amused
and care free.
A 7 THE end of six weeks probably the
n wood is stacked that ought to have been
ready for the cook when you came, but
meanwhile she has found whole pile of
old dry nubbins under the porch floor that
every one had forgotten the painter has
done the roof at his ease on the cool days
and not shortened his life for a whim of
yours by painting when the mercury stood
at 90 degrees, and the wire fence has got
finished on a better line than if they had
followed out your written directions. And
seeing the error of your impatient ways,
you smile indulgently at your next guest
who points out some much needed improve
mcnt on the old farm and says you had
better get at the job this week or 1t will
be too late.
He, poor soul, does not live in land
where there is always tomorrow, And
realizing that. you promise to do it at once
knowing quite well that if you get around
to it next year it will be lucky.
T THINK the reason. however. for your
i contentedness with the state wherein you
find yourself has an even reaer reason than
the distance of the railroad and the unim-
portanCe of timetables. l believe that the
beauty of things as they are makes up fOr
the inconvenience.
If nothing that your eye rests upon Is in
itself ugly, but is, on the contrary, generally
beautiful; if the sounds that fall on your ears
are not diScOrdant or monotOnOuS, but
pleasing and diverting and soothing; If the
odors that rise up are delicious and fresh,
and If the things which YOU touch are clean
and in n sense wholesomely responsive
well, there you are! Why should you hurry
away from anything? Standing still won't
make you liable for sudden death. as it
will in town looking about you won't pain
or irritatc or offend YOU, as in most man
made places the odOrs that softly assail
you do not remind you of dirt or decaying
things or of manufactured things. but OF
growing and blooming and ripenng things.
1t is as though you had entered delightful
room belonging to valued friend whose
coming was delayed perhaps Meanwhile,
you settle in an easy chair and look about
you complacently at the books and the fire
light and the flowers and the open piano
with the music handy. and maybe you take
up a book or maybe you doze a little or just
drift off into pleasant thoughts, grateful for
the leisured order of the charming room and
its power to rest you by its very atmosphere
This power of lovely environment to
rest one has been understood better in every
land in the world than ours.
WE AMERICANS make great deal in
w our houses and our fats of convent
ence We worship the god of plumbing and
we bow the knee to the goddess of cleo
trCity. Floors that can show no dirt. paint
that will shed the dust, metal that will stay
nolighpd curtains that will not fade hot