, _our_ empty-headed pride, _our_ boasting. _We_--Why "_we_"?

What have you and I had to do with the new inventions in electricity
or mechanics or the conquest of the air?

Not one single, solitary thing! The progress of the world has
been made through the efforts of a few solitary, exceptional, rare
individuals, not by the combined efforts of us all. You and I are
as common, unprogressive, uninventive, indifferent mediocrities as
we--the common people--always were. We have not contributed one iota
to all this progress, and I often question whether mud; of it comes
to us more fraught with good than evil. We claim the results without
engaging in the work. We use the 'phone and worry because Central
doesn't get us our connections immediately, when we haven't the
faintest conception of how the connection is gained, or why we are
delayed. We ride on the fast train, but chafe and worry ourselves and
everybody about us to a frazzle because we are stopped on a siding by
a semaphore of a block station which we never have observed, and would
not understand if we did. We reap but have not sowed, gather but have
not strewed, and that is ever injurious and never beneficial. Our
conceit is flattered and enlarged, our importance magnified, our
"dignity"--God save the mark!--made more impressive, and as a result,
we are more the target for the inconsequential worries of life. We
worry if we are not flattered, if our importance is not recognized
even by strangers, and our dignity not honored--in other words we
worry that we are not _kow-towed_ to, deferred to, respectfully
greeted on every hand and made to feel that civilization, progress
and advancement are materially furthered and enhanced by our mere
existence.

Every individual with such an outlook on life is a prolific
distributer of worry germs; he, she, is a pest and a nuisance,
more disturbing to the real peace of the community than a victim
of smallpox, and one who should be isolated in a pest-house. But,
unfortunately, our myopic vision sees only the wealth, the luxury, the
spending capacity of such an individual, and that ends it--we bow down
and worship before the golden calf.

If I had the time in these pages to discuss the history of worry, I am
assured I could show clearly to the student of history that worry is
always the product of prosperity; that while a nation is hard at work
at its making, and every citizen is engaged in arduous labor of one
kind or another f