Annie Laurie, who writes many sage counsels in the San Francisco Examiner, had an excellent article on this subject in the issue of December 31, 1915.  She wrote: 

Here is something that I saw out my window—­it has given me the big thought for my biggest New Year’s resolution.  The man at the corner house ran down the steps in a terrible hurry.  He saw the car coming up the hill and whistled to it from the porch, but the man who was running the car did not hear the whistle.  Anyway, he didn’t stop the car, and the man on the steps looked as if he’d like to catch the conductor of that car and do something distinctly unfriendly to him, and do it right then and there.  He jammed his hat down over his forehead and started walking very fast.

“What’s your hurry?” said the man he was passing on the corner.  “What’s your hurry, Joe?” and the man on the corner held out his hand.

“Well, I’ll be—­,” said Joe, and he held out his hand, too, “if it isn’t—­”

And it was, and they both laughed and shook hands and clapped each other on the back and shook hands again.

“What’s your hurry?” said the man on the corner again.

“I dun-no,” said the man who was so cross because he’d lost his car.  “Nothing much, I guess,” and he laughed and the other man laughed and they shook hands again.  And the last I saw of them they had started down the street right In the opposite direction from which the man in the hurry had started to go, and they weren’t in a hurry at all.

Do you know what I wished right then and there?  I wished that every time I get into the senseless habit of rushing everywhere and tearing through everything as if it was my last day on earth and there wasn’t a minute left to lose, somebody would stop me on the corner of whatever street of circumstance I may be starting to cross and say to me in friendly fashion: 

“What’s the hurry?”

What is the hurry, after all?  Where are we all going?  What for?

What difference does it make whether I read my paper at 8 o’clock in the morning or at half-past 9?

Will the world stop swinging in its orbit if I don’t meet just so many people a day, write so many letters, hear so many lectures, skim through so many books?  Of course if I’m earning my living I must work for it and work not only honestly but hard.  But it seems to me that most of the terrific hurrying we do hasn’t much to do with really essential work after all.  It’s a kind of habit we get into, a sort of madness, like the thing that overtakes the crowd at a ferry landing or the entrance to a train.  I’ve seen men, and women, too, fairly fight to get onto a particular car when the next car would have done just exactly as well.

Where are they going in such a hurry?  To save a life?  To mend a broken heart?  To help to heal a wounded spirit?  Or are they just rushing because the rest do it?

What do they get out of life—­these people who are always in a rush?