Closely allied to bashfulness as a cause of many worries is hyper-or super-sensitiveness.  And yet it is an entirely different mental attitude.  Hyper-sensitiveness may cause bashfulness, but there are many thousands of hyper-sensitives who have not a spark of bashfulness in their condition.  They are full of vanity or self-conceit.  Elsewhere I have referred to one of these.  Or they are hyper-sensitive in regard to their health.  They mustn’t do this, or that, or the other, they must be careful not to sit near a window, allow a door to be open, or go into an unwarmed room.  Their feet must never be wet, or their clothing, and as for sleeping in a cold room, or getting up before the fire is lighted, they could not live through such awful hardships.

I have no desire to excoriate or make fun of those who really suffer from chronic invalidism, yet I am fully assured that much of the hyper-sensitiveness of the neurasthenic and hypochondriac could be removed by a little rude, rough and tumble contact with life.  It would do most of these people no harm to follow the advice given by Abernethy, the great English physician, to a pampered, overfed hyper-sensitive:  Live on six pence a day and earn it.  I have found few hyper-sensitives among the poor.  Poverty is a fine cure for most cases, though there are those who cling to their pride of birth of education, or God knows what of insane belief in their superiority over ordinary mortals, and make that the occasion, or cause, of the innumerable and fretting worries of hyper-sensitiveness.

Another serious cause of worry, in this busy, bustling, rapid age, is the need we feel for hurry.  We are caught in the mad rush and its influence leads us to feel that we, too, must rush.  There is no earthly reason for our hurry, and yet we cannot seem to help it.

Hurry means worry.  Rush spells fret.  Haste makes waste.  You live in the country and are a commuter.  You must be in the city on the stroke of nine.  To do this, you must catch the 8:07.  You have your breakfast to get and it takes six minutes to walk to the station.  No one can do it comfortably in less.  Yet every morning, ever since you took this country cottage, you have had to rush through your breakfast, and rush to the depot in order to catch the train.  Thus starting the day on the rush, you have continued “on the stretch” all day, and get back home at night tired out, fretted and worried “almost to death.”  Even when you sit down to breakfast, you begin to worry if wifie doesn’t have everything ready.  You know you’ll be late.  You feel it, and if the toast and coffee are not on the table the moment you sit down, your querelous complaints strike the morning air.

Now what’s the use?

Why don’t you get up ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes earlier, and thus give yourself time to eat comfortably, and thus get over the worry of your rush?  Set the alarm clock for 7:00, or 6:45, or even 6:30.  Far better get up half an hour too early, than worry yourself, your wife, and the whole household by your insane hurry.  Your worry is wholly unnecessary and shows a fearful lack of simple intelligence.