Form a Line!
Anyone that wants an illustration of the selfishness to which mankind are prone may find it most readily by taking his stand in any place where men and women are waited upon. The speedy tendency is to crowd up close around the person that is doing the work, whatever it is, and still to crowd tighter and tighter, each eager to get ahead of his neighbor, and be waited upon as soon as possible.
You see this at the window of a bank teller. Up they come in both directions, and in they push. If some official of the bank is at hand, he will say, "Form a line, please," and he will enforce courtesy with a stern hand. If he is not, then—push, growl, jam!
Women, I am sorry to say—let us hope it is their inexperience—are most frequent violators of this simple rule. If a line is formed, and a woman comes in, it is altogether the exception to see her go to the foot of the line and await her turn. Quite invariably she tries to push in at the head. If she fails in that laudable effort, she remains there, glowering at the beasts of men until she perceives that they will remain beasts and will not make room for her. Then, with heightened color, she goes to the foot of the line—which, in the meantime, has already lengthened and placed her farther from the window than she would have been if she had gone there at once. Not all women do this, you will understand; but the majority of them do. Ask any bank teller.
It is the same way at the stamp-window of the post-office and at the cloak-room for a public dinner, and at the lunch-counter of the railroad restaurant, and at the ticket-office of the railway station, and at the baggage-room—everywhere, indeed, one notices the reluctance to fall in line and take one's turn.
In the large things of life the tendency is even more strikingly manifested. There are positions to fill. There are salaries to get. There are honors to receive. In the natural course of events your share of these will come to you if you do your work well and fit yourself for them. But no; the most of us find it far too tame a process to form a line and wait our turn for the good things of life. Push ahead! Rush in! Hustle! Crowd! Jam! Help yourself, and the devil take the hindmost!
Ah, that is no out-of-date saying: the first shall be last and the last shall be first! If one could only get the world to believe it!