Does it seem wasteful, this waiting? Let us, then, remind ourselves that
excess and precipitation are more than wasteful,--they are directly
destructive. The fire that blazes beyond bounds not warms the house,
but burns it down, and only helps infinitesimally to warm the wide
out-of-doors. Any live snail will out-travel a wrecked locomotive, and
besides will leave no trail of slaughter on its track. Though despatch
be the soul of business, yet he who outruns his own feet comes to the
ground, and makes no despatch,--unless it be of himself. Hurry is the
spouse of Flurry, and the father of Confusion. Extremes meet, and
overaction steadfastly returns to the effect of non-action,--bringing,
however, the seven devils of disaster in its company. The ocean storm
which heaps the waves so high may, by a sufficient increase, blow them
down again; and in no calm is the sea so level as in the extremest
hurricane.

Persistent excess of outward performance works mischief in one of two
directions,--either upon the body or on the soul. If one will not
accommodate himself to this unreasonable quantity by abatement of
quality,--if he be resolute to put love, faith, and imagination into
his labor, and to be alive to the very top of his brain,--then the body
enters a protest, and dyspepsia, palsy, phthisis, insanity, or somewhat
of the kind, ensues. Commonly, however, the tragedy is different from
this, and deeper. Commonly, in these cases, action loses height as it
gains lateral surface; the superior faculties starve, being robbed of
sustenance by this avarice of performance, and consequently of supply,
on the part of the lower,--they sit at second table, and eat of
remainder-crumbs. The delicate and divine sprites, that should bear the
behests of the soul to the will and to the houses of thought in the
brain her intuitions, are crowded out from the streets of the cerebral