One meets few unworried people. Most faces bear lines of care. Men go anxious to their day’s duties, rush through the hours with feverish speed, and bring hot brain and tumultuous pulse home at night for restless, unrefreshing sleep. This is not only most unsatisfactory, but is also a most costly mode of living.
One night the train lost two hours in running less than a hundred miles. “We have a hot box,” was the polite conductor’s reply to an impatient passenger who asked to know the cause of the long delays at stations. This hot-box trouble is not altogether unknown in human life. There are many people who move swiftly enough, and with sufficient energy, but who grow feverish, and who are thus impeded in their progress. A great many failures in life must be charged to worrying. When a man worries he is impeded in several ways. For one thing, he loses his head. He cannot think clearly. His brain is feverish and will not act at its best. His mind becomes confused, and his decisions are not to be depended upon. The result is that a worried man never does his work as well as he should do it, or as he could do it if he were free from worry. He is apt to make mistakes.
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