The Sunday Eight O'Clock/On Time
WHEN the Barrows family filed into church—father, mother, and the seven little red-headed Barrowses,—we always knew that the services were pretty well under way. I used to think sometimes that the minister planned his sermon with their coming in mind, and allowed time for a pause or a breathing spell while they were getting comfortably arranged in their pews.
The congregation was never quite settled until they arrived, for they attended regularly, though they were punctiliously and dependably late, like some instructors to an eight o'clock or like the Big Four between Peoria and Indianapolis. I used to wonder why, although we lived two miles farther from the church than they, we always arrived on time for the opening hymn and the collection while they escaped half the service. It was so regular that their belated arrival seemed planned, deliberate, quite intentional.
I have learned since that being late or being on time is all a matter of habit, just as one learns to put on one's clothing in an orderly way without following a recipe.
It is usually the same persons who regularly come late to church or who tiptoe into the class room ten minutes after the last bell has rung, or who annoy the sensitive soprano and the whole auditorium full of people by stumbling into their seats while the program is under way. And the people who are late are usually in a hurry. I meet them daily going up the stairs three steps at a time, rushing breathlessly to catch a disappearing car, or coming in hot and perspiring in a vain attempt to make up for a late start.
We have all suffered from the selfishness of the man chronically behind his schedule. A friend of mine who is punctiliously prompt in meeting all of his engagements says that he has developed corns from having his feet trod upon by late-comers who walk over him getting into their places. It was a cynic, perhaps, who said that he had wasted more time by being on time than by any other process, but his cynicism has in it more than a modicum of truth.
These people who are forever behind in meeting their engagements and who thus handicap and disturb and delay those who are conscientious and methodical are not busier than their neighbors; they simply delude themselves in the belief that that which has previously taken a half hour to accomplish they can this morning do in ten minutes. They never learn by experience. They continue to retard the progress of every enterprise with which they are connected. They ought to start earlier, take an earlier train, or cancel the date.
April