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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Think, by Col. Wm. C. Hunter
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Think
+       A Book for To-day
+
+Author: Col. Wm. C. Hunter
+
+Release Date: July 25, 2011 [EBook #36849]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THINK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: Wm C Hunter]
+
+
+
+  THINK
+
+  A Book for To-day
+
+  By
+  COL. WM. C. HUNTER
+
+  Author of
+  Pep, Dollars and Sense, Brass Tacks, etc.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  The Reilly & Lee Co.
+  Chicago
+
+
+
+  _Printed in the United States of America_
+
+  Copyright, 1918
+
+  by
+  The Reilly & Britton Co.
+
+  _Made in U. S. A._
+
+  Published September 24, 1918
+  Second Printing--October 1, 1918
+  Third Printing--June 15, 1919
+  Fourth Printing--June 1, 1920
+  Fifth Printing--April 3, 1922
+  Sixth Printing--February 27, 1925
+  Seventh Printing--October 25, 1926
+  Eighth Printing--October 5, 1927
+
+
+  _Think_
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHER'S NOTE
+
+
+When Colonel Hunter wrote PEP in 1914 and offered it to The Reilly &
+Britton Company, we immediately accepted the manuscript for publication.
+So highly did we regard the work that the president of this company,
+over his signature, contributed an introductory note of endorsement,
+citing his own experience in following the rules and principles laid
+down in PEP for the attainment of "poise, efficiency and peace."
+
+Our confidence and belief in PEP were amply justified. Eight large
+editions were printed in four years. Over 70,000 copies have been sold.
+
+THINK--the last book that Colonel Hunter wrote--is now published for the
+first time. It is especially important, coming, as it does, at a time
+when commonsense thinking, good health, good cheer, optimism and
+rational methods of living are more necessary than ever before.
+
+In this trenchantly written volume, Colonel Hunter has given some golden
+advice to the man or woman who is facing the big problems of to-day in a
+wavering or hopeless spirit. Correct your thinking. Get a grip on
+yourself. Colonel Hunter tells you how.
+
+
+
+
+THINK
+
+
+
+
+1.
+
+
+We all enter the world with an abundance of nerve energy, and by
+conserving that energy we can adapt and adjust our nerve equipment to
+keep pace with the progress and evolution of our times.
+
+The way to preserve and conserve nerve equilibrium and power is to rest
+and relax the nerves each day.
+
+You may rest them by a change of the thought habit each day, by
+relaxation, by sleep, and by the suggestions made in this book.
+
+There are but few advance danger signals shown by the nervous system,
+and in this there is a marked difference between the nerves and the
+organic system.
+
+If you abuse your stomach, head, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys or eyes,
+you have distress and pain.
+
+The nervous energy is like a barrel of water--you can draw water from
+the faucet at the bottom until you have almost exhausted the contents.
+
+Nature mends ordinary nerve waste each day, like the rains replenish the
+cistern.
+
+[Sidenote: Conserve Your Energy.]
+
+A reasonable use of your nerve force, like a reasonable use of the
+rainwater, means you can maintain a permanent supply. But you must be
+reasonable; you must give the cistern a chance to refill and replace
+that which you have drawn out.
+
+You, who have shattered and tattered your nerves, are not hopeless. You
+can come back, but it must be done by complete change of the acts that
+brought on the condition.
+
+Get more sleep. Eliminate the useless, harmful fads, fancies and
+functions which disturbed and prevented you from living a sane, rational
+life.
+
+Avoid extremes, cultivate rhythm and regularity in your business and
+your home life. Keep away from excitement. Read really good books. Walk
+more, talk less.
+
+Eat less heat-making foods and more apples. Follow the diet, exercise
+and thought rules suggested in "Pep."
+
+[Sidenote: No Need to Despair.]
+
+Maybe these lines are being read by a discouraged one who is "all
+nerves," which means lost nerve force. To you I say there is hope and
+cheer and strength and courage if, right here, now, you resolve to cut
+the actions, habits and stunts that knocked you out and follow my
+suggestions.
+
+I know, my friend, for I've trotted the heat, danced the measure, and
+been through the mill.
+
+Now I am fearless, calm and prepared. I can stand any calamity, meet any
+issue, endure any sorrow.
+
+I can do prodigious work in an emergency, go without rest or eating when
+required, because I have poise, efficiency--peace.
+
+[Sidenote: Steer a Middle Course.]
+
+I realize nothing is as bad as it is painted. Nothing is as good as its
+boosters claim. I go in the middle of the road, avoiding extremes. I
+have confidence in my heart. Courage, hope, happiness, and content
+attend me on my way.
+
+I've buried envy in a deep pit and covered it with quick lime.
+
+I am keeping worry out by keeping faith, hope and cheer thoughts in my
+brain-room, and these are antiseptics against the ravages of the worry
+microbe.
+
+I have my petty troubles and little make-believe worries, just enough of
+them to make me realize I have them licked, and to remind me I must not
+let up on my mastery of them.
+
+Worry growls once in a while just to make me grab tighter the handle of
+my whip.
+
+And you may enjoy this serene state, too. There is no secret about it. I
+will gladly give you the rules of the game in this book. Just prepare to
+receive some practical, helpful suggestions.
+
+
+
+
+2.
+
+
+[Sidenote: How to Use Your Assets.]
+
+You are a busy person, so am I. Busy persons are the ones who do things.
+The architect is a busy man, but he has learned that the effort spent in
+preparing his plans is the most important part of his work. The plans
+enable him to do his work systematically and lay down rules and methods
+to get the highest efficiency and accomplishment from those who do the
+work of erecting the building.
+
+If the architect would order lumber, stone and hardware, without system,
+and start to erect the building without carefully prepared plans, the
+building would lack symmetry and strength, and it would be most
+expensive.
+
+The planning time therefor was time well spent.
+
+Few persons have the ability to control and conserve their talents so as
+to produce the highest efficiency. Men rush along thinking their
+busyness means business. Really, it means double energy and extra moves
+to produce a given effect.
+
+[Sidenote: Unnecessary Moves.]
+
+The elimination of unnecessary moves means operating along lines of
+least resistance, and any plan or method that will help to do away with
+unnecessary moves and make the necessary moves more potential will be
+received with welcome, I am sure.
+
+With the object of conserving energy and strengthening your force, this
+book is written.
+
+It shall not be a book of ultimate definiteness or a book of exact
+science. There are no definite or exact rules that will apply, without
+exception, to any science except mathematics.
+
+But we shall learn many helpful truths, nevertheless, and if I err, or
+disagree with your conclusions, just eliminate those lines and take the
+helps you find.
+
+I particularly emphasize the importance of taking a few minutes each
+evening and using the time for sizing up things, by inventory, analysis,
+speculation, comparison and hypothesis. Many of the great captains of
+industry who are noted for their energy in accomplishing things worth
+while, have learned the value of this daily habit.
+
+[Sidenote: Know Thyself.]
+
+I want to help YOU to form the habit of thinking over each day's
+activities in the quiet, relaxed, uncolored, unprejudiced, secluded
+environment of your home. When the day's work is over, spend fifteen or
+twenty minutes each evening in seclusion, and with closed eyes, size
+yourself up. Think over your daily round and the work you are doing. Are
+you getting the best out of yourself? Or are you plodding along
+aimlessly, scattering your energy in a haphazard, hit-or-miss fashion
+that benefits nobody? Are you growing, or are you standing still? In
+these fifteen-minute sizing-up sessions, you will come to grips with
+yourself. You will see yourself as you really are, and will discover
+your weaknesses, your strength, your real worth.
+
+I have chosen the evening as the time for our little talks. In the
+evening we can be cozy, comfy and communicative. The bank is closed. We
+met the note and got through the day. We are alive and well; we can open
+our hearts. There is no office boy to disturb us, and the life insurance
+agent is away at his club.
+
+Yes, we can be alone and tranquilly let down the tension, lower the
+speed and with normal heartbeats play the low tones, the soft strains,
+the quieting music, and soothe our nerves.
+
+All day we've heard the band with its drums and trombones and shrieky
+music. The day with its busy whirl kept our analyzing mental think-tank
+occupied with thoughts of gain and game and fame.
+
+In the evening we have time to study logic and to reason, to analyze and
+to take inventory, to thresh out problems.
+
+So let us relax and reflect in the evening quiet.
+
+
+
+
+3.
+
+
+Man's nature makes it imperative for him to be interested in something.
+
+That interest is to his help or hurt, according as he directs it.
+
+There is much worry and misery in the world because so many are astatic,
+like a compass that has lost its loadstone.
+
+Man is definitely the result of the materials the body and the mind feed
+upon.
+
+Character is the result of a determined purpose to be and to do
+right--to one's self and to one's fellows.
+
+The man of character focuses his attention on truth, and on fact.
+
+[Sidenote: Theory and Fact.]
+
+He uses theories with fact, to aid his progress, but he recognizes that
+theorizing, without fact as a safety ballast, is a useless expenditure.
+Theories without fact leave man in a rudderless boat; he gets nowhere,
+he merely drifts.
+
+Theory often helps to get at fact, but the better way is to get at fact
+by proven experience, of which there is an inexhaustible abundance in
+the world.
+
+Facts are based on natural laws. The study of natural laws is
+beneficial. We shall strive in our studies to keep close to fact with
+just enough speculation to enliven the interest in facts.
+
+Living the artificial life makes for worry, illness and failure.
+
+Living in harmony with the great natural laws is the helpful way to
+live.
+
+To abide by the law is safety; to violate the law brings punishment.
+
+Every man is better if he follows scientific methods and habits of
+thought and living.
+
+The loafing or astatic mind will fall into morbid tendencies.
+
+The employed, truth-seeking, idealistic, hopeful mind is never dependent
+on people or things for its pleasure.
+
+The acquiring of helpful knowledge, the seeking of worth-while truth,
+are ever profitable employments, paying present and future dividends,
+and meanwhile those acts positively divert the thought from morbid
+tendencies.
+
+I shall strive to bring helpful knowledge, good cheer and interesting
+facts for your present occupation and benefit.
+
+If I succeed in accomplishing my purpose, even in part, my time has been
+well spent.
+
+[Sidenote: Thought Never Stops.]
+
+We have an unchallenged fact to rest our feet on, a fact that shall
+follow us through all the pages of this book, and that is: Our thoughts
+never stop, our brains never sleep. So then, we must consider that
+thought current, and reckon with it.
+
+The motive power is turned on, and we must grasp the helm if we sail the
+sea of life successfully, baffling storms and avoiding rocks.
+
+Scientific books are usually dry, uninviting reading; they lack the
+human interest. They are generally bloodless skeletons.
+
+We shall try to weave science into new patterns and paint interesting
+pictures, so that science will attract and not repel.
+
+This book is different in its suggestions, in its prescriptions, in its
+language, but it is universal with all scientific books, in that its aim
+is helpful truth.
+
+We go by different routes, but our objective point is the same.
+
+We will avoid technical names and symbols, and will speak the common
+language that the multitude understands.
+
+We shall deal with problems and aspirations that come to us all in this
+busy workaday world.
+
+We shall try to cut the underbrush in the swamp and blaze a plain trail
+out on to the big high road.
+
+We shall keep in step to the drum-beats of truth, we will rest and
+recreate in cool shady places, and then up and on to our purpose with
+smiles on our faces, courage in our hearts, and song on our lips.
+
+Every moment of our journey will be worth while and positively helpful
+if we take the trip with conscientious application and continuity of
+purpose.
+
+Our path is strewn with roses and thorns; we must enjoy the roses and
+escape the thorns.
+
+We welcome you, the neophyte, who have joined us in our pilgrimage.
+
+
+
+
+4.
+
+
+Let's be personal; that's a good way to establish a good idea in place
+of a bad one.
+
+Are YOU pleasant to live with? Keep this personal question before you,
+even if you are cocksure that you can answer, yes.
+
+[Sidenote: Be Pleasant.]
+
+Maybe there are some little jars, rattles, gratings, you are not aware
+of. Few of us are honest when looking for our own faults. There may be
+some sand in your gear box. It won't hurt you to keep the personal
+question alive for a few days,--"Am I pleasant to live with?"
+
+I love the pleasant people whether they are fat, lean, tall, short, red
+heads, brown heads, homely, handsome, republicans or democrats, business
+men or artisans.
+
+The complaining, unpleasant grouch is like a bear with a toothache.
+Miserable himself and spreading misery all around.
+
+A freckle-faced, red-headed, cross-eyed man with a healthy funny bone
+will spread more cheerfulness and sunshine than a bench full of sad and
+solemn justices of the supreme court, or a religious conference.
+
+What a different story would be written of Job, if he had only possessed
+a servant who could dance a double shuffle and whistle "Dixie" while
+cooking breakfast.
+
+David was a man after my own heart; he brought gladsome songs into the
+world. He said, "Live the way of pleasantness."
+
+You can pray, sing, play, work, think, rest, hope; you can be well or
+ill, rich or poor and still be pleasant to live with.
+
+[Sidenote: Pleasantness a Tonic Quality.]
+
+Being pleasant helps you to be strong in body and mind, and it keeps you
+young a long time. It's good medicine; I know it. My little motto, "Be
+pleasant every morning until ten o'clock, the rest of the day will take
+care of itself," has brought sunshine into many homes.
+
+If you frown it will soon get to be a habit--and give you a heavy heart.
+If you smile your face will be attractive, no matter how unlucky you
+were in the lottery of beauty.
+
+Be pleasant and you will never feel old. The pleasant disposition is a
+sure route to happy land and happy homes.
+
+Old Ponce de Leon lost out in searching for the fountain of youth. If
+he had been pleasant, he would have kept the smiles on his wife's face
+and there would have been no excuse to leave her to find the mythical
+fountain.
+
+Hoe cake, bacon and smiles beat lobster, champagne and frowns.
+
+Our land is thrice blessed with its peaceful, happy homes--for "happy
+homes are the strength of a nation."
+
+Be pleasant in your home. Make the children feel home is the pleasantest
+place in the world.
+
+Every act and example is written in the child's memory tablet. Let your
+hours with the children be loving, laughing, living hours. Pat them on
+the head, joke with them, whisper affection, express love to them. Those
+acts will be remembered in all their years to come, for you are planting
+everlasting plants that may pass on to a hundred generations and make
+children happy a thousand years from now.
+
+[Sidenote: Cheerfulness Its Own Reward.]
+
+Be pleasant to live with and you will have more pleasant things to live
+for. There will be kindnesses, kisses, beauty, health, peace, fun,
+happiness and content coming your way all along the great big road of
+life you are traveling.
+
+Be pleasant to live with and the people will turn to you as you pass
+and reflect your cheerfulness like the sunflowers turn to face the sun.
+
+Be pleasant; don't be cross and crabbed because someone else in the
+household is not pleasant. Do your part; you will likely thereby cure
+the frown habit on the face of the unfortunate disturber of your peace.
+
+Make yourself right before you criticise your life partner. Answer this
+question, "Am I pleasant to live with?"
+
+Don't fool yourself in the matter. Get right down to brass tacks with
+yourself, watch your moves and acts and attitude for ten days carefully
+before answering the question.
+
+If your answer is no, now is your time to change your attitude and try
+the pleasant plan, and here is my blessing and good wishes in such an
+event.
+
+
+
+
+5.
+
+
+There is fun and interest and diversion all around us. All we need is
+keen observation and we will see much that passes unnoticed to the
+preoccupied person.
+
+What an interesting thing is the great round world we live in! The
+people are as interesting as fish in an aquarium.
+
+[Sidenote: Sitting on the Side Lines.]
+
+See the rushing, surging crowd. Man pushes along searching for necessary
+things to be done; he builds cities, harnesses rivers, makes ships to
+sail the seas to the uttermost parts of the earth. Man goes to war, he
+builds death-dealing devices that destroy in a few minutes a beautiful
+cathedral which has taken centuries to build.
+
+Man makes the desert blossom like a rose.
+
+Here is the scientist in his laboratory, trying to unite certain
+elements to produce new substance. Here is the beauty in her silken
+nest; here the lover; there the musician; yonder the peanut man, and in
+the office building is the captain of industry--all busy bees deeply
+absorbed in their respective interests, and intoxicated in the belief
+that they are important and greatly necessary.
+
+Yet in the broad measure of ages they are mere ripples on the sea of
+time, faint bubbles on the eternal deep, and grains of sand at the
+mountain foot.
+
+Great man by his own measure--minute man by the great measure of time.
+Mammoths to the near-sighted--mites to the far-sighted. Hustle and
+bustle, crowd and push. They tramp down the weaker brothers in the mad
+race after the golden shekels, which are only measures of the ability to
+buy and own material things; symbols of power to make others serve you.
+These golden shekels which men fret, sweat and fight for, can only buy
+physical and material things.
+
+[Sidenote: A Great Truth.]
+
+Away from the crowd is the little group who have learned a great truth,
+which is that happiness is not to be bought with gold. This little
+minority knows that mental pleasures are best, and that mental pleasures
+cannot be found on the great highway of material conquest.
+
+The puffy, corn-fed millionaire pities the man who is content to live
+with small means and enjoy what he has to the full extent.
+
+[Sidenote: Real Happiness.]
+
+The wise man is he who gets fullness out of life--happiness, respect,
+content, freedom from worry; who is busy doing useful things--busy
+helping his brother, busy training his children, busy spreading sunshine
+and love and the close-together feeling in his home circle.
+
+The corn-fed, hardened, senseless, money-mad, dollar-worshipper knows
+not peace. Smiles seldom linger on his lips. Peace never rests in his
+bosom, cheer never lights his face. He is simply a fighting machine,
+miserable in solitude, suffering when inactive and sick when resting.
+
+The money-chaser is up and doing, working like a Trojan, because
+occupation takes his mind off the painful picture of his misspent
+opportunity and his destroyed natural instinct. When fighting for gold
+he forgets his appalling poverty in the really worth-while things in the
+world.
+
+Like the drunkard in his cups, the intoxication makes him forget, and he
+is negatively happy.
+
+Money received as reward for doing things worth-while is laudable.
+
+We cannot sit idly by and neglect to earn money to provide food, shelter
+and education for our loved ones, but between times we should seek the
+wealth that comes from right mental employment.
+
+The millionaire thinks, dreams and gets dollars, and that is all.
+
+The worth-while man thinks kindness, usefulness, self-improvement,
+brotherhood, love and he gets happiness.
+
+[Sidenote: Doing for Others.]
+
+The man who discovers means to help his fellow man, does a good act, but
+is the man with the dollars in front of his eyes who commercializes the
+discovery and invention. In the end, the man that helped mankind fares
+better than the man who made the millions.
+
+It's a great crowd surging by, and very few have the good sense to learn
+the value of TO-DAY. That great crowd I see below my window thinks ever
+of to-morrow and forgets the wondrous opportunities that to-day holds
+out.
+
+Those who think always of to-morrow will never get the beauties and joys
+from life that comes to the little group of To-day, who appreciates and
+enjoys the real Now, rather than the pictured To-morrow that never
+comes.
+
+It's mighty interesting to sit on the side lines and watch the crowds go
+by and speculate on their movements.
+
+[Sidenote: The Road to Disillusionment.]
+
+Save up your pennies, measure everything by the dollar standard, think
+dollars, dream dollars, work, slave, push for the dollars and you will
+build a fortune. You will never have peace or recreation or joy; you
+will live only in hope of a some day when you will retire. That's the
+way the millionaires travel life's highway.
+
+Some day the paper will announce the death of those millionaires, and
+then the dollars will be blown in by reckless heirs, and so the grinding
+wheels roll on.
+
+Surely there are many ways of looking at things. Surely there is much of
+interest in the crowd. Surely there is an unending amount of thought and
+speculation possible about that crowd way down on the street below my
+window.
+
+What passions, what hopes, what joys, what sorrows, are in the hearts of
+that hurrying, worrying crowd.
+
+What noise this din of traffic makes; what activity man has stirred up.
+
+A picture, a drama, a tragedy, a comedy--all these I see in the human
+ants that run along below the hive where I sit and write these lines.
+
+The phone rings and my little Nancy Lou's voice says, "Daddy, will you
+please bring me a pencil and a tablet with lines on it."
+
+So I must needs stop this, whatever you may call it, and push through
+the crowd to get that tablet with "lines on it" for my Nancy Lou; and
+there is some feeling of happiness and content and peace in Daddy's
+heart as he lays down his pen, for Daddy is going Home, and that word
+means a lot in his little family, where they all say "Daddy" instead of
+Papa or Father.
+
+
+
+
+6.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Wasted Energy.]
+
+It is hard enough to do duty once, but doubly hard when you anticipate
+mentally everything you have to do to-morrow. This doing things twice is
+a habit easily acquired if you don't watch out, and it means wasted
+energy.
+
+I have just read the experience of a housewife who was resting on a
+couch and reading. Her eye caught sight of a book lying on the floor
+across the room.
+
+Instantly her mindometer, if I may coin a word, registered, "When you
+get up, pick up that book."
+
+She went on reading, but her mind was not on the magazine she held, but
+on that book on the floor.
+
+So obsessed did she become that she was miserable until she got up and
+picked up the book.
+
+I was talking with a woman who was resting on her porch. Her day's work
+was over. She was dressed for the afternoon. Everything in the home was
+neat, sweet, clean and tidy. All was serene but her face, and that was
+the window through which I saw worry working overtime.
+
+By strategy I learned the trouble, and here is her story: "To-morrow a
+lot of fruit will be ready to preserve. I am worrying where I shall put
+it. My fruit closet is full."
+
+[Sidenote: Doing Things Twice.]
+
+The woman had every reason to say to herself, "Sufficient unto the day,"
+yet she was doing the preserving mentally to-day and to-morrow she would
+do the work physically. A tired mind is harder to rest than a tired
+body, so we must nip this advance mental work in the bud.
+
+We have all been mentally obsessed with worrying about the things we
+were going to take on our trip; then worrying over the routine of our
+work when we should return from our trip.
+
+If the housewife looks over her week's work and washes the dishes, makes
+the beds, cooks the meals, dresses the children, mends the clothes, and
+does all these things in her imagination before she does them in
+reality, she is indeed a hard working woman.
+
+It's all right to plan your work; that's economy in mental expenditure,
+for it simplifies, systematizes, and saves work.
+
+[Sidenote: Planning is Efficiency.]
+
+Plan your work in advance, but do not keep your mind on the plans until
+the work is done. When you have planned, then close the mental book of
+to-morrow's duty, and turn to pleasures, rest, relaxation and enjoyment
+of to-day.
+
+It is to get a definite, different thought habit fixed that I ask you to
+give me these few minutes each day, so that we may consider various
+phases of life, science, pleasure, morals and mental refreshment.
+
+True, we can only have a fleeting look at things, but we'll get enough,
+I hope, to freshen your minds, change the humdrum, and elicit interest
+in things. Maybe these heart-to-heart, confidential chats will help us
+and keep us from going through the mental motions of to-morrow's
+physical work.
+
+If these evening talks interest you, help clear your vision, help cheer
+you, help rest you, then they are good for you, and because they help
+you, they certainly benefit me and make me very happy, because happiness
+comes from doing something for others.
+
+I write as the mood strikes me, or as a phase of life comes before me,
+or as an idea strikes in and just won't let go until I grasp my pen and
+let the words flow.
+
+I mean this book to be human, and not a studied literary effort.
+
+I want to reach you right there alone in the room where you are reading
+this, and I want the suggestions, the good, the help, to soak in, and I
+want you to pass the good you get to your brother; you won't lose a bit
+by doing so.
+
+
+
+
+7.
+
+
+"She is all right--her only trouble is her NERVES." How often we hear
+that and how little does the person with steady nerves appreciate the
+tortures of "nerves."
+
+[Sidenote: About Nerves.]
+
+A cut, a bruise, a headache, or any of the physical ailments can be
+quickly cured. Nature will mend the break, but tired, worn, stretched,
+abused nerves take time to restore. These nerve ailments call for most
+vigorous mental treatment.
+
+Neurasthenia means debilitated or prostrated nerves and it shows itself
+first of all by worry. Worry means the inability to relax the attention
+from a definite fear or fancied hard luck. Worry leads to many physical
+and mental disorders.
+
+Left alone this worry stage develops into an acute state and brings with
+it nervous prostration, and sometimes a complete collapse of the will
+power.
+
+Before the acute stage of neurasthenia is reached, there is noticed
+"brain fag," and brain fag is nature's warning signal calling upon you
+to take notice and change your mental habits.
+
+Worry sometimes develops into hysteria; again it takes the form of
+hypochondria or chronic blues. The hypochondriac has a chronic, morbid
+anxiety about personal health and personal welfare. Frequently this
+state is accompanied by melancholia.
+
+Melancholia is the fork in the road. One turning leads to incurable
+insanity, the other to curable melancholia.
+
+Right here is where heroic action is needed by the sufferer.
+
+[Sidenote: Cure the Worry Habit.]
+
+Here is where the sufferer must exert his maximum will power, and change
+completely his mental and physical habits and his surroundings.
+Occupation, changed habits, taking in of confidence, faith and courage
+thoughts--these changes are necessary to the victim of melancholia, or
+he will shatter his health on the danger rocks and go to pieces.
+
+Melancholia is an ailment that offers a good chance for Christian
+Science. Mental suggestion, the powerful personality of a friend, and
+the personal help such a friend can give by counsel, example and
+suggestion, are all helps.
+
+I have abundant evidence that melancholia sufferers can be restored to
+peace, efficiency and poise, by proper thought direction, and by proper
+physical employment.
+
+"Pep," which has principally to do with mental efficiency, definitely
+lays down rules and practical suggestions for the employment of the mind
+and body. I have letters and verbal proofs in quantity proving the
+efficiency of those rules and suggestions.
+
+So wonderful have been the results, so numerous the recoveries, that the
+testimonials, if published, would make the fake nerve tonic manufacturer
+die of envy.
+
+[Sidenote: The Importance of Nerves.]
+
+"Only your nerves." I cannot understand why the word, only, is used. It
+makes it appear that nerves are of minor importance. Nerves are less
+understood than anything in the human anatomy and they are harder to
+understand.
+
+Experience has proved that nerves cannot be restored by dope, patent
+medicines, tonics or prescriptions.
+
+The cure must come by and through the individual possessing the nerves,
+and by and through the individual's power of will and mastery of the
+mind.
+
+Get the mental equipment right. Let the mind master the body. Let the
+nerve sufferer get hold of himself and fill his brain with
+faith-thought instead of fear-thought, with courage instead of
+cowardice, with strength instead of weakness, with hope instead of
+despair, with smiles instead of frowns, with occupation instead of
+sluggishness, and wonders will appear.
+
+The little shredded, tingling nerve-ends will then commence to
+synchronize instead of fight, to harmonize instead of breaking into
+discord, to build instead of destroy.
+
+[Sidenote: You Can "Come Back."]
+
+The building, or coming back to a normal state, is slow; it takes time,
+patience and will power, but it can be done. I know. I have been through
+the mill, and I pass the word to you and try to stir you to be up and
+doing, even as I did.
+
+Your nerves can be steadied, your thoughts uplifted, your health
+restored, your ambition re-established, your normality fixed.
+
+Smiles, love and content are to be yours. Poise, efficiency, peace, your
+blessings. Health, happiness and hope your dividends. All these I
+promise you if you will read this book from cover to cover, _think_, and
+follow its plain, practical teachings.
+
+The curriculum is not hard; it is not my discovery. I am merely the
+purveyor of facts, the gleaner of truth, and the selector of helpful
+experiences, first of all for my own benefit, and having proved the
+truth in my own case, for friends to whom I pass the truths and rules.
+
+I made bold to write books, but the writing has paid me well, not alone
+in dollars, but from having done a helpful thing in writing for other
+humans who have had problems, worries and nerves.
+
+The big books on nerves are discouraging and forbidding by their
+immensity and the labyrinth of technical, scientific terms. There are
+fine for teachers, but discouraging for the layman.
+
+The great everyday crowd is the class I want to talk to, and so I
+endeavor to write in plain human, sincere style from heart to heart,
+with understanding, feeling, charity and sympathy.
+
+I have felt the things you feel, and if I can by example, emphasis,
+suggestion, rule or good intent, be a help to you, then I have done a
+service.
+
+
+
+
+8.
+
+
+There are men who cannot be kept down by circumstances or obstacles.
+
+[Sidenote: The Men Who Do Things.]
+
+These men "carry on" with confidence in their hearts and smiles on their
+faces. They do not lie in wait for the band wagon or favorable winds;
+they make things happen. They are alert and alive to every favorable
+opportunity and helpful influence that comes their way.
+
+These men are men of good health. They are out of doors much; they carry
+their heads high and breathe in good air deeply. They greet friends with
+a smile and put meaning and feeling into every hand clasp.
+
+Let's you and I follow their trail, for it leads out on to the big road.
+
+Do not fear being misunderstood; right will finally come into its own.
+
+We will keep our minds off our enemies, and keep our thoughts on our
+purpose; we will make up our minds what we want to do. We will mark a
+straight line on the log and hew to that line.
+
+Fear is the dope drug that kills initiative; hate the poison that
+shatters clear thinking.
+
+Hate and fear are the iron ore in our life's vessel; they deflect the
+compass and prevent us from holding to the course.
+
+[Sidenote: Grasp Present Opportunities.]
+
+There are splendid worth-while things for us to do, and with continuity
+of action and singleness of purpose on our part the days will pass by as
+we are seizing opportunity and making use of the things required for the
+fulfillment of our desires. We are like the coral insect that takes from
+the running tide the material to build a solid fortress. Our running
+tide is made up of the gliding golden days.
+
+Let's waste no time in trying to make friends or in seeking to attach
+ourselves to others. True friends are not caught by pursuit; they come
+to us; they happen through circumstances we do not create.
+
+Self-reliance is ours, and we must first use it for our own betterment.
+We will then have a surplus of energy to allow us to help others.
+
+Our energy hours must be devoted to our purposes and ideals. Atween
+times, we must rest and relax, and repair the waste that strenuosity
+makes.
+
+Breathe good air, bask in the sunshine, see nature, and say to yourself:
+"All these treasures are for me; all these things I am part of."
+
+[Sidenote: The Joy of Living.]
+
+Do not prepare for death; prepare for life. Preparing for death brings
+the end before your allotted time. Like Job of old, that which we fear
+will come to us. We must not think of death, or waste time preparing for
+it. It makes us miserable to-day. It makes us weak and fills us with
+fear, and it draws the day of our departure nearer.
+
+To-day is ours. Live freely, fully to-day. Be unafraid, unhurried, and
+undisturbed.
+
+We are building character, and the way we build it is by mental
+attitude, by our acts, and by the way we employ the precious moments of
+to-day.
+
+Put yourself in harmony with nature--realize the wonderful power of the
+will--and you will be strong, a veritable king among men.
+
+
+
+
+9.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Pessimist.]
+
+The calamity howler is found everywhere. In times of peace or war he is
+with us. This pessimist sows seeds of discord, plants envy, generates
+the anarchist spirit, and is an all-around nuisance.
+
+A man may spend years erecting a building; a fiend can demolish it in a
+minute with a stick of dynamite.
+
+The calamity howler is a destroyer; he doesn't think, he spurts out
+words. His words and arguments are simply parrot mimicry and void of
+intellectual impulse, as are the movements of an angle worm.
+
+These gloom merchants talk of their rights, and they expect and demand
+the same privileges and benefits that are earned by the man who uses his
+head.
+
+The pessimist sees good in nobody. Human nature to him is a cesspool of
+villainy and corruption. He will not tolerate a word of praise for a
+thing well done. Disparagement is his favorite weapon. He ascribes mean
+and selfish motives to public-spirited men. Every deed of kindness,
+every act of generosity, is given a sinister meaning when seen in the
+light of his own base soul.
+
+At home he is a grumbler and a grouch. His presence depresses, and
+happiness fades away at his approach.
+
+In the community, he never reaches high office because he lacks civic
+spirit and the forward-looking view. He obstructs progress instead of
+promoting it.
+
+At his work, he lags behind where others achieve. He rails at conditions
+instead of changing them, and eventually he finds himself shelfed and
+shunned as a back number.
+
+These purveyors of panic eat into the vitals of the nation. They breed
+discontent, undermine morale, and sow suspicion and distrust where
+previously there had been friendliness, co-operation and the
+pull-together spirit.
+
+Wherever men gather, you will find these ghoulish spirits. They are in
+evidence in times of peace and plenty, as well as in times of war and
+peril.
+
+It matters not that our farmers are seeing to it that our granaries are
+filled to-day as never before, and that every man has a job. These
+prophets of disaster have only one string to their harp, and they will
+twang on that and no other.
+
+[Sidenote: The Danger of Pessimism.]
+
+In times of war, the pessimist is doubly dangerous, for he spreads his
+iniquitous propaganda among people who are already under a great
+emotional strain. Always a menace, when a people are in the throes of a
+great life-and-death struggle, it is doubly necessary to stamp out this
+destroyer of morale, with his insidious campaign of gloom and despair
+and his veiled innuendos of panic and destruction.
+
+It is up to you and to me to denounce these breeders of discord; to hold
+them up to the scorn of intelligent, thinking people. They are neither
+doers nor thinkers, and the world has no need of them in these trying
+times.
+
+
+
+
+10.
+
+
+This evening I rode home in a crowded street car. What an interesting
+study it was to watch the faces in that car.
+
+Discontent, discomfort, worry, gloominess on nearly every face. Tired
+faces, tired bodies drooped over from a hard day's work, mouth corners
+depressed. Hopelessness stamped on the countenances.
+
+[Sidenote: Gloom and Cheer.]
+
+As the people came in the car, some of them had smiles or at least
+passable expressions, but when they got crowded together and saw the
+gloomy faces, the gloom spread to their faces, too. At a picnic, all are
+smiling and laughing. In the street car at six o'clock, the long
+procession of workers is a stream of solemn faces. Contagion, example,
+surroundings, yes, that's it--contagion and example.
+
+At six o'clock in the cars, all is gloom, blueness and sorrow faces. At
+eight o'clock many of these faces will be changed; there will be joy,
+smiles, rosiness, singing and dancing. Yet the actual conditions of
+finance, health, hope or prospects haven't changed since these people
+were in the car at six o'clock.
+
+Why, then, such a change in two hours?
+
+[Sidenote: Good Cheer Contagious.]
+
+It is this: At seven o'clock these workers sat down to supper; they were
+out of that gloom-reflected street car atmosphere. Now they are talking;
+they are rounding-up the day's activities; they are HOME with mother,
+sister, brother and the kiddies. The home ones greet them with smiles,
+the appetizing supper pleases the palate, good cheer permeates, and all
+around them is smiles and joy.
+
+Gloom spreads gloom. Joy spreads joy. Gloom is black; joy is white. One
+darkens, the other brightens.
+
+Well, then, where's the moral? What's the benefit from this little study
+of the street car passengers?
+
+The lesson is plain: It is that you and I are ferments of joy, or acids
+of gloom. We are influences to help or to hurt. To hurt others by our
+example hurts us. To help others by our example helps us. We become
+happier than ever.
+
+In the street car, life was not worth living if you judged by the pained
+faces. In two hours, by changed thought, the example of life was worth
+while.
+
+What changes mental attitude makes!
+
+  "When a man has spent
+  His very last cent,
+  The world looks blue, you bet;
+  But give him a dollar,
+  And loud he will holler
+  There's life in the old world yet."
+
+Next time we get on the street car, let's plant some smiles. Let's give
+that lady a seat and smile when we do it.
+
+We can spread cheer by merely wearing a cheery face. Costs little, pays
+big. Let's do it.
+
+
+
+
+11.
+
+
+Some of our richest blessings are gained by not striving for them
+directly. This is so true that we accept the blessings without thinking
+about how we came to get them.
+
+[Sidenote: Be Happy.]
+
+Particularly true is this in the matter of happiness. Everyone wants to
+be happy, but few know how to secure this blessing. Most people have the
+idea that the possession of material things is necessary to happiness,
+and that idea is what keeps architects, automobile makers, jewelers,
+tailors, hotels, railroads, steamships and golf courses busy.
+
+Do your duty well, have a worth-while ambition, be a dreamer, have an
+ideal, keep your duty in mind, be occupied sincerely with your work,
+keep on the road to your ideal, and happiness will cross your path all
+the while.
+
+Happiness is an elusive prize; it's wary, timid, alert and cannot be
+caught. Chase it and it escapes your grasp.
+
+[Sidenote: One Man's Story.]
+
+I read today of a friend who walked home with a workman. This is the
+workman's story: He had a son who was making a record in school. He had
+two daughters who helped their mother; he had a cottage, a little yard,
+a few flowers, a garden. He worked hard in a garage by day, and in the
+evening he cultivated his flowers, his garden, and his family. He had
+health, plus contentment a-plenty. His possessions were few and the care
+of them consequently a negligible effort.
+
+Happiness flowed in the cracks of his door. Smiles were on his lips, joy
+in his heart, love in his bosom; that's the story my friend heard.
+
+Then came a friend in an automobile on his way home from the club. He
+picked up my friend, and unfolded to him a tale of woe, misery and
+discontent.
+
+This club man had money, automobiles, social standing, possessions, and
+all the objects and material things envious persons covet--yet he was
+unhappy. His whole life was spent chasing happiness, but his sixty
+horsepower auto wasn't fast enough to catch it.
+
+The poor man I have told you about was the man who washed the club man's
+auto.
+
+The strenuous pleasure seeker fails to get happiness; that is an
+inexorable law. He develops into a pessimist with an acrid, satirical
+disgust at all the simple, wholesome, worth-while, real things in life.
+
+This is not a new discovery of mine; it's an old truth. Read
+Ecclesiastes, the pessimistic chronicle of the Bible, and you'll learn
+what comes to the pleasure-chaser, and you will know about "vanity and
+vexation of spirit."
+
+[Sidenote: Making Others Happy.]
+
+Do something for somebody. Engage in moves and enterprises that will be
+of service to the community and help the uplift of mankind. This making
+others happy is a positive insurance and guarantee of your own
+happiness.
+
+You must keep a stiff upper lip, a stiff backbone; you must forget the
+wishbone and the envious heart.
+
+Paul had trials, setbacks, hardships and hard labors; he had defeats and
+discouragements and still the record shows he was "always rejoicing."
+
+Paul was a man of Pep. In the dungeon, with his feet in stocks, he sang
+songs and rejoiced. Paul was happy, ever and always, not because he
+strove to get happiness, but because he had dedicated his life to the
+service of mankind.
+
+The real hero, the real man of fame, the real man of popularity, doesn't
+arrive by setting out on a quest for any of these things; the result is
+incidental.
+
+The real hero forgets self first of all; that is the essential step to
+greatness.
+
+Washington at Valley Forge had no thought that his acts there would
+furnish inspiration for a picture that would endure for generations.
+
+Lincoln, the care-worn, tired, noble man, in his speech at Gettysburg,
+never dreamed that that speech would stamp him as a master of words and
+thought, in the hearts of his country-men. He thought not of self. He
+was trying to soothe wounds, cheer troubled spirits, and give courage to
+those who had been so long in shadowland.
+
+Ever has it been that fame, glory, happiness came as rewards, not to
+those who strive to capture, but to those who strive to free others from
+their troubles, burdens and problems.
+
+
+
+
+12.
+
+
+I am often asked: "Are you happy ALL the time?" My answer is no.
+
+[Sidenote: Continuous Happiness Impossible.]
+
+A continuous state of happiness cannot be enjoyed by any human. There
+are no plans, no habits, no methods of living that will insure unbroken
+happiness. Happiness means periods or marking posts in our journey along
+life's road. These high points of bliss are enjoyed because we have to
+walk through the low places between times.
+
+Continuous sunshine, continuous warm weather, continuous rest,
+continuous travel, continuous anything spells monotony. We must have
+variety.
+
+We need the night to make us enjoy the day, winter to make us enjoy
+summer, clouds to make us enjoy sunshine, sorrow to make us enjoy
+happiness.
+
+But, dear reader, mark this: We can be philosophical, and have content,
+serenity and poise between the happiness periods.
+
+When you get blue, or have dread or sorrow, or possess that
+indescribable something that makes you feel badly; when you have worry
+or trouble, then's the time to get hold of your thinking machinery and
+dispel the shadows that cross your path.
+
+Occupation and focusing your thoughts on your blessings--these are the
+methods to employ.
+
+As long as you dwell upon your imagined or your real sorrows, you will
+be miserable and the worries will magnify like gathering clouds in
+April.
+
+[Sidenote: Think Happiness.]
+
+Change your thoughts to confidence, faith, and good cheer, and busy your
+hands with work. Think of the happiness periods you have had, and know
+that there are further happiness dividends coming to you. Keep this sort
+of thought, and with it, useful occupation, and the sunshine will dispel
+your gloomy forebodings and sorrow thoughts like the sun dispels the
+April showers, bringing about a more beautiful day because of the clouds
+and storms just passed.
+
+When trouble or sorrows come, sweeten your cup with sugar remembrances
+of joys that have been and joys you are to have.
+
+Envy no one; envy breeds worry. The person you would envy has his
+sorrows and shadows, too. You see him only when the sunlight is on the
+face; you don't see him when he is in shadowland.
+
+[Sidenote: Brace Up, Cheer Up.]
+
+No, dear ones, I, nor you, nor anyone on earth can have complete,
+unruffled, continued happiness, but we can brace up and call our reserve
+will-power, reason, and self-confidence into action when we come to the
+marshy places along the road. We can pick our steps and get through the
+mire, and sooner than we believe it possible, we can get on the good
+solid ground; and as we travel, happiness will often come as a reward
+for our poise and patience.
+
+My friends say: "You always seem happy," and in that saying they tell a
+truth, for I am happy often--very, very often--and between times I make
+myself seem to be happy. This making myself "seem to be happy" gives me
+serenity, contentment, fortitude, and the very "seeming" soon blossoms
+into a reality of the condition I seem to be in.
+
+You can be happy often, and when you are not happy, just seem to be
+happy anyway; it will help you much.
+
+
+
+
+13.
+
+
+A little child is crying over a real or fancied injury to her body or to
+her pride.
+
+So long as she keeps her mind on the subject she is miserable.
+
+Distract her attention, get her mind on another subject, and her tears
+stop and smiles replace frowns.
+
+This shows how we are creatures of our thoughts. "As a man thinketh in
+his heart, so is he" is a truth that has endured through the centuries.
+
+We are children in so far as we cry and suffer when we think of our ills
+or hurts or wrongs or bad luck.
+
+We can smile and have peace, poise and strength if we change our
+thoughts to faith, courage and confidence.
+
+[Sidenote: Fear-Thought and Faith-Thought.]
+
+Our condition is what we make it. If we think fear, worry and misery, we
+will suffer. If we think faith, peace and happiness, we will enjoy life.
+Every thought that comes out of our brain had to go in first. The kind
+of thoughts we have afford an indication of the kind of people we are.
+
+If we feed our brain storehouse with trash and fear and nonsense, we
+have poor material to draw from.
+
+[Sidenote: Thought Control.]
+
+The last thought we put in the brain before going to sleep is most
+likely to last longest. So it is our duty to quietly relax, to slow
+down, to eliminate fear-thought and self-accusation, and to substitute
+some good helpful thought in closing the mental book of each day.
+
+Therefore read a chapter or two from a worth-while book the last thing
+before going to bed.
+
+Say to yourself, "I am unafraid; I can, I will awake in the morning with
+smiles on my face, courage in my heart, and song on my lips."
+
+These suggestions for closing the day will be of instant help to you.
+
+The great power for good--the wherewith to give you strength, progress
+and efficiency--is within yourself and at the command of your will.
+
+You can't think faith and fear, good and bad, courage and defeat, all at
+the same time.
+
+You can only think one thing at a time.
+
+Your great power is your will, and the wherewith to help yourself is
+your thought habit.
+
+Change your thought habit as you go to bed. You can do it; it's a matter
+of will determination. The more faithful you are to your purpose, the
+easier your task will be. Be patient, conscientious, rational and
+confident.
+
+You are what your thoughts picture you to be. Your will directs your
+thoughts.
+
+Don't get discouraged if you can't suddenly change your life from shadow
+to sunshine, from illness to wellness.
+
+Big things take time and patience. The great ship lies in the harbor
+pointed North. A tug boat could make a sudden pull and break the great
+chain or tow line.
+
+Yet you could take a half-inch rope and with your own hands turn the
+great ship completely around by pulling steadily and patiently. The
+movement would be slow, but it would be sure and you would finally
+accomplish your purpose.
+
+Don't jerk and fret and be impatient with yourself. You have been for
+years perhaps worrying and thinking fear-thoughts. You have put a lot of
+useless and harmful material in your brain.
+
+You can't clean all your brain house in a day or a week, but you can do
+a little cleaning each day.
+
+You can take the faith-rope of good purpose and start to pull gently,
+and finally you will turn your whole life's character toward the port of
+success.
+
+The great crowd worries; only the few have learned the power of the
+will, and the benefits to be derived from mental control.
+
+Business and social duties call for strong men and woman. You can't
+reach mastership if you remain a slave.
+
+Your first duty is to yourself, and success or failure is your reward
+exactly in proportion as you exercise your will power and handle your
+thought habits.
+
+
+
+
+14.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Best Medicine.]
+
+The doctors are giving less medicine and doing more in the way of
+suggesting diet and exercise rules, sanitation and preventive practices.
+Medicine is mostly poison and its effect is to shock the organs or
+glands to bring about reaction. Nature makes the cure.
+
+In emergency drugs are all right, but the doctor and not the individual
+should settle the matter of what drug to use and the proper time to use
+it.
+
+When there's a pain or disease, it's due to congestion of some organ, to
+infection, or to improper nourishment, or improper habits.
+
+Ninety per cent of aches, pains and ailments can be cured by a dominant
+mental attitude and by proper attention to eating and exercise.
+
+The habitual medicine user is not cured by the medicine but by nature;
+the medicine simply serves as a means to establish mental control and to
+create confidence in the sufferer that he is to get well.
+
+Recently I spent much time in a large hospital visiting a relative who
+had been operated on. I know several members of the staff of doctors and
+nurses.
+
+I have seen many operations, some very heroic ones, and my appreciation
+of the good work of good surgeons is greatly augmented by the wonderful
+helps I have seen them bring to suffering humanity.
+
+I have talked with scores of patients and watched the progress of their
+cases.
+
+I have by plausible logic, mental suggestion, and good cheer to the
+hospital patients, brought many a smile through a mist of tears.
+
+I have seen the wonderful results of mental suggestion to the
+discouraged patients.
+
+To show the effects that faith-thought will produce, I will relate some
+instances.
+
+[Sidenote: Mental Sickness.]
+
+One patient screaming for a hypodermic injection to relieve her pain was
+given an injection of sterilized water and the pain vanished. Another
+just could not sleep without her bromide. The nurse fixed up a powder of
+sugar, salt and flour; the patient took the powder and went to sleep.
+That was mind control and mental longing satisfied.
+
+Another patient had to take something to stop her pains; she got
+capsules of magnesia. The capsule satisfied her longing, established her
+faith and gave her relief; the relief was through her mind and not
+through the capsule.
+
+[Sidenote: Changing Thought Direction.]
+
+I have seen several weary, despondent patients fretting and wearing
+themselves out over their so-called weakness and run-down condition. I
+have placed copies of "Pep" in their hands and watched courage, faith,
+cheer and serenity come to them. It diverted their minds from
+self-thought and self-accusation to faith-thought, confidence and
+courage.
+
+You can think of only one thing at a time, and "Pep" or any other book
+that can change the thought habit from fear to faith, from worry to
+peace, is doing a service.
+
+I've been in shadowland in the hospital to see for myself the actual
+help that mental control will bring to sufferers, and the evidence is
+far above my powers to describe.
+
+I've seen the patient's eyes brighten up when the cheery surgeon came
+with hope, smiles and confidence on his face.
+
+I've seen the drooping of spirits when well-meaning but poor-expressing
+friends came into the patient's room and condoned and sorrowed with
+him.
+
+Verily, "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
+
+Verily, good cheer and good thought are good medicines.
+
+And to these truths all good doctors say "Amen!"
+
+
+
+
+15.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Pill Fiend.]
+
+How often we see the pill fiend. In his vest pocket he has a small
+apothecary shop--a collection of round paste-board boxes and little
+bottles. Every little while he dopes himself. If his stomach is on a
+strike, he pops in a pill. If his head aches, he takes a tablet. If he
+sneezes, he takes a cold-cure pill.
+
+When anyone around speaks of a pain or ache, he hands the person a pill.
+
+The pill eater is a hypochondriac, and very likely his doctor knows it.
+His salvation is that the doctor probably gives him harmless stuff in
+pill form. The patient doesn't know this, and it's like a rabbit's foot
+or a piece of pork rubbed on a wart--it satisfies the mind and nature
+makes the cure.
+
+Often, however, the pills are not innocent; the pill fiend buys the
+tablets and pills direct from the druggist. The headache tablet is most
+likely one of the coal tar drugs like acetanilid, and that is positively
+harmful when taken too often.
+
+There are times to take pills--in cases of emergency, when you can shock
+nature with a poison and bring a wholesome reaction.
+
+These times are rare, and the doctor should be the sole judge as to when
+such treatment is necessary.
+
+Exercise, diet, correct habits of living will prevent the congestion and
+clogging-up that causes illness and pain.
+
+[Sidenote: A Dangerous Habit.]
+
+The pill habit is nothing less than a drug habit, and the drug habit
+positively weakens the system. The headache tablet does not cure the
+headache; it only stops the pain; the evil is still there. The headache
+is merely nature's signal that something is out of whack.
+
+Headaches are generally caused by stomach disorders, eye strain, or
+neuralgia; the latter in turn is caused by too much uric acid in the
+system.
+
+Eat fruit, drink plenty of water, and that will flush the system and
+stop stomachic headache.
+
+See the optician if it's eyes. If you have a frequent headache in the
+forehead, very likely it's the eyes, even though you do not suspect it.
+
+If it's neuralgia, get a corrective diet from the doctor.
+
+I know scores of men, and women, too, who take pills enough to kill a
+person. Their systems have been educated up to it; they are saturated
+with poison.
+
+And the worst of it is they never get well while taking the pills; it is
+only a temporary deadening of the pain.
+
+Then, there are many who take pills to make them sleep. That's a crime.
+It's self-murder by slow degrees, for they are surely shortening their
+lives by this poison dope pill habit.
+
+[Sidenote: Nature, the Curer.]
+
+Mark this: Nature, and Nature alone, effects cures, and it's in very,
+very few instances that a poison pill can be used to advantage. You can
+keep well by getting good air, good water, good sunshine, good food,
+good exercise, good rest, good cheer and good thought. That is what I
+call my golden prescription, and it will do wonders for you, and every
+doctor will tell you so.
+
+Pills kill, if you keep up the habit. There are no two ways about it. I
+say positively and knowingly that this pill habit is absolutely life
+shortening.
+
+Don't try to argue; the evidence is unshakable on this point.
+
+If you could have seen the derelicts in the hospitals that I have, if
+you could have seen the wretched bodies, destroyed nerve systems, the
+broken-down, emaciated, hopeless shells of men and women addicted to the
+baneful pill habit, you would be as positive as I am that pills kill if
+you keep up the habit.
+
+Life is sweet and precious to us all. Do not shorten it by taking pills
+and tablets for every ache or pain. Try nature's way. Realize that
+mental suggestion and will-power will drive away most pains or temporary
+aches.
+
+Brace up, cheer up; chuck the pills in the garbage can.
+
+
+
+
+16.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Two Kinds of Pleasures.]
+
+There are two principal kinds of pleasures that man seeks; one is
+material pleasures, and about ninety-nine per cent of the human family
+devote themselves to these. The remainder--the one per cent--seek mental
+pleasures, and this little group is the one that gets the real, lasting,
+satisfying and improving pleasures out of life.
+
+The material pleasures are the social pleasures of eating, displaying,
+possessing, and so forth. Material pleasures generate in the human the
+desire for fluff, feathers, and four-flushing.
+
+Material pleasures accentuate the desire to possess things, and in the
+strife for possession, hearts are broken, fortunes wasted, nerves
+shattered, and the finer sentiments calloused.
+
+The homes where material pleasures abound are the ones where worry,
+neurasthenia and nervous prostration abound.
+
+Material pleasures are merely stimulants for the time being, and there
+always come the intermittent reflexes of gloom and depression.
+
+The desire to show off, to excite envy in others, is always present at
+the homes where material pleasures are the rule.
+
+Material pleasures call for crowds. Mental pleasures are best enjoyed in
+solitude.
+
+The material pleasure-seeker lives a life of convention, engagements,
+routine, strain, and high tension.
+
+[Sidenote: Mental Pleasures Are Best.]
+
+The person who is so fortunate as to appreciate and follow mental
+pleasures is serene, natural, happy and content. A cozy room, loved ones
+around, music, books, love and social conversation--those are mental
+pleasures; those are best. He who can pick up a book and read things
+worth while, gets satisfaction unknown to those whose life is a round of
+banquets, theaters, dances, automobiles, parties, bridge, clubs and
+society doings.
+
+When you spend the evening playing cards, the chances are you come home
+late, and when you retire, it takes perhaps an hour or so before you
+fall to sleep.
+
+And during the night you dream of cards, of certain hands, of certain
+circumstances, or certain persons who were prominent in the evening's
+game.
+
+The reason you do not go to sleep after an exciting evening is that you
+have set your nerve carburetor at high tension and have forgotten to
+lower it before you go to sleep.
+
+[Sidenote: Good Reading.]
+
+On the other hand, when you have been reading a restful book, full of
+good thought, you establish an equilibrium, a relaxed state of nerves,
+and particularly, you have switched the current or direction of your
+day's thoughts. That change spells rest, and you retire and go to sleep
+easily.
+
+You will scarcely believe what a wondrous change for the better you will
+notice in yourself if you make it a rule to have a brain clearing,
+mental inventory, and nerve relaxation every night before you go to
+sleep.
+
+Your brain works at night always; oft-times you have no remembrance of
+your dreams, but if your last hour, before retiring, was an hour of
+excitement, tension or unusual occupation, you will likely go over it
+all again in your dreams.
+
+If you will let nothing prevent your evening period of soliloquy, you
+will establish your mental habits into a rhythm that will give you
+peace, rest and benefit.
+
+In the olden days, when most families had evening worship or family
+prayers, the members of those households slept soundly and restfully.
+
+Particularly was this so because of the habit formed of getting the mind
+on peaceful, helpful, comforting, soul-satisfying thoughts that remained
+fresh on the brain tablets as the members of the home circle went to
+sleep.
+
+Too often the books read in the home circle are all of the exciting,
+fascinating, highly colored imaginative type. People read stories of
+love, adventure or crime, and they dream these same things almost every
+night.
+
+I have found that it pays to read two classes of literature in the same
+evening. First read your novel, story, or fascinating book, but fifteen
+minutes before you are ready to go to sleep, read some good, wholesome,
+helpful, uplifting book, and that good stuff will be lastingly filed
+away in your brain.
+
+[Sidenote: What to Read.]
+
+Finish your evening with books that are interesting, yet educational.
+Such books as "Life of the Bee" by Maeterlinck, or any one of Fabre's
+wonderful books on insect life; "Riddle of the Universe" by Haeckel;
+Darwin's books; Drummond's "Ascent of Man;" "Walks and Talks in
+Geological Fields" is a splendid mental night cap; "Power of Silence;"
+"Physiology of Faith and Fear;" Emerson's "Essays;" Holmes' "Autocrat
+of the Breakfast Table;" "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam; Tom Moore's Poems;
+"Plutarch's lives;" Seneca; Addison; Bulwer Lytton; Hugo; Carlyle's
+"Sartor Resartus." This latter book will not fascinate you like
+Carlyle's "French Revolution," but you will learn to love its fine
+language, its fine analysis of character, of times, and of things.
+
+[Sidenote: What You Gain.]
+
+There are countless books of the good improving kind. Always save one of
+them for your solid reading, after you have read light literature or
+novels. If you will get the habit, you will notice great benefits and
+rapid advancement in your mental equipment. You will sleep better, think
+clearer; you will learn to enjoy mental pleasures more than material
+pleasures.
+
+Fifteen minutes, then, to be yours, yours alone, in which you quiet,
+soothe, strengthen and pacify yourself and add abundant resources and
+assets.
+
+Let the last reading in the evening be something worth storing up in
+that precious brain of yours, and the good, worth-while deposit will
+grow and produce beautiful worth-while mental fruit.
+
+[Sidenote: Don't Overdo It.]
+
+Get the home reading habit. Don't overdo it. Call on friends; go to a
+good picture show once in a while, to good concerts, to good plays, but
+do not make this going-out-in-the-evening-plan a habit. Let it be merely
+a dessert, or a rarity. Like candy and ice cream, it is proper and
+enjoyable when it is not overdone.
+
+The lover of books and home can enjoy the play, because he only goes to
+plays worth while, and he doesn't overdo it.
+
+The confirmed theater-goer is a pessimist; he roasts nearly every play,
+and he is universally bored.
+
+When you get started reading worth-while books on science, on history,
+on geography, on travel, on natural history, you tap an inexhaustible
+field of pleasure and satisfaction.
+
+At any time, you can pick up your book and be happy.
+
+Waits in railway stations will be opportunities; trips on trains will be
+pleasant; evenings alone will be enjoyable, if you can get into a book
+you like.
+
+Mental pleasures are best.
+
+Material pleasures are merely passing shadows--to be enjoyed for the
+brief moment before they disappear.
+
+
+
+
+17.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Verbomania.]
+
+The malady Verbomania is spreading rapidly. What's that? You have never
+heard of Verbomania? Well, then, it's taken from _verbosus_, the Latin
+word meaning "abounding in words," the using of more words than is
+necessary. _Mania_, also Latin, means "to rage"--excessive or
+unreasonable desire. Therefore, Verbomania is the excessive desire to
+use more words than are necessary.
+
+There is too much talk nowadays and too little thinking. Some persons
+start their gab carburetors, and they talk and talk mechanically,
+without any effort spent in thinking. Just like walking, the motion just
+goes by itself.
+
+Scientists have suggested that perhaps too much talking without thinking
+is a disease. I don't see that there is any _perhaps_ about it. Disease
+is an unnatural condition--a function of the mind or body out of its
+natural order of working.
+
+We know we can sit down and run ideas through our brain without words,
+and we can use a lot of words without ideas.
+
+You have read whole pages in a book without receiving an idea. One can
+rattle off words and not have ideas. When the fountain of words flows in
+a desert of ideas, it's Verbomania.
+
+[Sidenote: Think More, Talk Less.]
+
+People in all walks of life have the disease; they talk together too
+much without any reason other than to take up time or make themselves at
+ease. Pink teas, receptions and society functions are great rookeries
+for these Verbomania birds to gather and indulge in their gabfest.
+
+The pianist through long practice is able to play a difficult
+composition without thinking about it; it's automatic; it's habit in
+action.
+
+The society dodo bird is just as dexterous in spinning words without
+thought, as the pianist with his difficult piece.
+
+Our rapid mode of living, our conventions and customs are responsible
+for much of the Verbomania.
+
+I should like to take my Dictophone to a fussy "afternoon" and record
+the word evacuations, the footless conversation, the forced
+pleasantries, the set sentences that mingle into a hum and buzz. A
+wilderness of words in a barrenness of ideas.
+
+This abuse of the use of speech makes headaches, weariness, worry,
+unrest; it saps strength, lowers pep, and lessens resistance.
+
+The cure for Verbomania is to keep away from these butterfly buzz bees;
+put the clothes-pin of caution on your lips; spend more time alone with
+your thoughts. Nourish your idea plants that have been starved; prune
+your word plants.
+
+Don't expose yourself to the crowds where the Verbomaniacs gather. The
+disease is contagious; it's easy to acquire and hard to retire.
+
+These are ideas put in type to convey a truth for the benefit of all who
+read these lines, and it is some truth, too.
+
+
+
+
+18.
+
+
+Love builds homes, gold builds houses. The home has a mongrel dog which
+is called Prince, and all the family love it. The house had a pedigreed
+bull pup that is kept in the barn.
+
+[Sidenote: House and Home.]
+
+There is all the difference between the family which has a home and the
+family which has a house. In houses we find broken hearts, worry,
+nervous prostration, because there is idleness, artificiality and
+aimlessness. In homes we find warm hearts, happiness and love, because
+those in the home have natural, helpful occupation.
+
+In the house is cold reserve; the occupants read when compelled to stay
+indoors; they grow crabbed and cross and get into a state of habitual
+dumbness and selfishness.
+
+In the home there is unselfishness, thoughtfulness, and love expressed.
+Meal time is joy time; it's the get-together period of smiling faces.
+
+In the house the breakfast table is merely a lunch station in the
+hurried trip from the bedroom to the office.
+
+The sensitive wife of the house gets stinging remarks that abide with
+her after the lord and master of the house has departed.
+
+[Sidenote: What Makes Home.]
+
+In the home the family gets up plenty early enough. Songs and jokes,
+kisses and love pats are found; the family is on time, and there is
+happiness all around. Homes are sweet, because love is present. Houses
+built by gold are just hotels.
+
+I've noticed the difference when a friend invites me to come to his home
+or to his house; the word he uses, home or house, indicates to me what I
+will find when I go there.
+
+In the house I meet a maid or butler at the door. I see conventional
+furniture, conventional rooms. I am shown into a conventional waiting
+room, and I wait conventionally for the hostess to come forward with a
+stiff backbone, a forced smile, and a languid handshake.
+
+When I go to a home built with love, I find a tidy dressed wife at the
+door, rosy children, and I get a warm, old-fashioned hand clasp, and a
+beaming, smiling face that spells welcome.
+
+And the dinner--that, too, tells the difference between the
+"depend-on-the-cook" establishment and the "wife-who-is-the-boss" home.
+
+At the house is formality and frigidity; at the home is ease and
+enjoyment. The children of the home make breaks and we love them for it;
+it's natural instinct and frankness.
+
+In the house is worry; in the home is happiness.
+
+Verily, there's a difference in the atmosphere of the house built with
+gold and the home built with love; one is worthless existence, the other
+worth-while living.
+
+
+
+
+19.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Seven Simple Health Suggestions.]
+
+I haven't space in this book to give reasons or show proofs for
+everything I suggest, but I want right here to give you a few definite,
+short, positive, helpful rules about food, thought, habit and exercise
+that will pay you the most wonderful dividends in health and happiness.
+
+First--Drink two or three glasses of warm, not hot, water, the first
+thing when you arise in the morning.
+
+Second--Repeat this resolve as you are drinking the water: "I will be
+pleasant this morning until ten o'clock, and the rest of the day will
+take care of itself."
+
+Third--Walk to your office or place of business, unless it is over four
+miles, in which case walk the first three miles and ride the remainder
+of the distance.
+
+Fourth--Eat one or two apples every day, and do not insult Nature's
+proper adjustment by peeling the apple. You want the skin because it has
+things in it you need for your body, and especially for your brain, and
+you have especial need of the roughage the skin gives.
+
+[Sidenote: Get Enough Sleep.]
+
+Fifth--Spend eight or nine hours a day in bed. I belong to the
+sixty-three hour club; that means nine hours a day rest, seven days in a
+week, which is sixty-three hours. If, through business, travel or other
+circumstances, I stay up late one or two nights a week, I balance books
+before the week is up by taking a rest on Sunday afternoon or going to
+bed earlier one or two nights.
+
+Sixth--Don't stay in bed Sunday morning. It will make you tired, loggy,
+stupid and cross. Get up Sunday, say, a half hour or an hour later than
+week days. Later in the day take a nap if you wish.
+
+Seventh--Spend fifteen minutes just before going to bed in quiet,
+relaxed solitude. This is the time to slow down your tension, relax your
+muscles and soothe your nerves.
+
+These rules you can easily remember and if you follow them as I hope you
+will, the red blood will course in your veins and joy will be in your
+countenance and the halo of happiness will be around your face.
+
+
+
+
+20.
+
+
+Every once in a while the human has a negative day. Every act, thought,
+or spoken sentence has a but, a don't, a can't, or some other negative
+attachment to it.
+
+[Sidenote: The Negative Attitude.]
+
+The children laugh, play and cut up in the morning, and mother says: "I
+don't know what I shall do with you, you are just wearing me out." This
+puts a fear-thought and a weakness-germ both in mother and the kiddies.
+
+On Sunday afternoon the family is resting. Mother maybe gets the blues,
+and says: "What's the use, I never get anywhere, go any place; it's just
+grind, work and worry all the time."
+
+Mother worries because there's a leak in the roof and the water stained
+the paper in the spare room. She worries because she lives in a rented
+house, and says: "I have no heart to fix things up because this is a
+rented house."
+
+This negative thought brings on a misery state; it's worry, and the
+worry comes because you dwell on the off side of things. You rehearse
+your problem, you go over your work, you count your obstacles, and you
+pile up the negative and fear thoughts.
+
+Bless you, my dear sister, I know what this negative can't, don't, but,
+and what's-the-use thought is and how it brings misery. I know how the
+children get on your nerves and make you say "don't" all day to them.
+
+[Sidenote: Show Your Positive Side.]
+
+There's only one way to drive out this negative thought and that is to
+switch your will power to the positive current. Next time you have a
+negative day and the fear thoughts come, just start in one by one and
+count your blessings of health, blessings of home, and blessings of
+love.
+
+Nothing can hurt you. You've been through these negative days time and
+time again; the clouds gathered, you were blue, lonesome, homesick and
+heartsick, but next day you got busy with work, and occupation drove
+away the clouds, and the sunshine came. The next Sunday you get in this
+negative state, just put on your hat and go out to see some neighbor, or
+go to the park, or take a walk.
+
+Don't sit and stew and fret over your magnified troubles.
+
+Let the children play and laugh; they are not hurting anyone. God bless
+them. They don't have worries; their little lives are all too short.
+Their example of smiles and laughter should make you happy. Soon, too
+soon, they will grow up and go their ways in life and how precious will
+be the memories of their carefree, golden, happy childhood days.
+
+Cut out envy; that's a mighty bad negative wire. It's the devil's
+favorite food to make worry and discontent.
+
+[Sidenote: Envy Makes Worry.]
+
+Many of the people you envied in the past are dead and buried. Many of
+the people you envy now are at heart miserable, and you wouldn't envy
+them if you could look through the artificial outside and know their
+real hidden thoughts and lives.
+
+"What's-the-use"--that's a bad thing to say; it plants worry seed.
+
+You are all right; you have far more blessings than sorrows. You can
+never be entirely free from troubles, care or little irritations.
+
+Rise superior to these things; those around you are affected by and
+susceptible to your influence and example.
+
+If you have a "but," an "if" or a "don't" tied to every command to your
+children, they will recognize your uncertainty and your negative,
+hurtful attitude, and they will take your threats, as well as your
+promises, with a grain of salt.
+
+Be careful in giving commands; don't put a Spanish bit in the children's
+mouths to jerk them and torture them.
+
+Be positive, make your promises and orders stick, and the kiddies will
+soon know you mean what you say.
+
+[Sidenote: Exposing Your Weakness.]
+
+These negative "driving me crazy" attachments to your commands spell
+weakness, and make you drive, cajole and spin out your orders, and the
+children hesitate and are slow to obey. Let them see your positive side.
+Let them learn to obey with a "yes, mamma" spirit, and your orders will
+be less frequent, shorter, and they will be obeyed on the instant.
+
+The kiddies learn to size you up, mamma, and if they see a wobbly,
+worried, despondent, unsure attitude in you, they will discount your
+threats and make allowances, saying: "That's mamma's way."
+
+Don't show your cry side but show your smile side.
+
+Sunday is a great trial day for you, mamma, but don't let your negative
+wires get the best of you.
+
+Sing as you make the beds and tidy up; let sunshine in and drive out the
+gloom.
+
+Blue Sundays are horror days for the children; you can't expect them to
+sit still like older folks. They are full of red blood and active
+muscles.
+
+Don't make Sunday a day of punishment to your children. They get their
+cue from you. Don't you be negative and cross and gloomy. It's bad
+business for you and all the family.
+
+
+
+
+21.
+
+
+The benefits of walking are so quickly apparent that I hope to get you
+to make the start and keep it up for two weeks. Then you will require no
+further urging.
+
+[Sidenote: The Best Exercise.]
+
+In walking, there are two most important things to do in order to get
+the greatest benefits: first--walk alone; second--walk your natural
+gait. So many people tell me they would like to walk all, or part of the
+way, between their home and office if they had company.
+
+Company is the very thing you don't want in walking, and there are two
+reasons for this. One is, if you walk with a friend, you will hold
+yourself back, or else you will be walking faster than your natural
+gait. In either case it is a conscious effort, and this conscious
+effort, to a large degree, will cause you to lose much of the benefit
+from your walk.
+
+The most important reason, however, is that if you walk with a friend,
+you are sure to talk, and thus you are using your nervous energy and
+tiring your brain--the very thing you want to avoid.
+
+[Sidenote: Walk, Not Talk.]
+
+Walking gives you physical exercise which is absolutely necessary for
+health. It is the best exercise I know of, because you do not overdo
+your strength. Walking is beneficial, because when you walk alone, you
+give your brain a rest. You cannot read the papers, you cannot talk, and
+your mental apparatus gets complete rest.
+
+I recommend that you walk anywhere from three to four miles in the
+morning. If your home is more than four miles from the office, walk
+three or four miles of the distance and then take the car.
+
+Do not walk home in the evening unless the walk is a short one. In the
+evening you are tired, and you should conserve your strength. In the
+morning you are fresh, and the exercise comes to you at a time it is
+most needed. It will give you strength and courage, and help to keep you
+in a good mood all day.
+
+I cannot too strongly emphasize the importance of walking alone, for it
+is then that you shift your nerve energy from the dry cell battery of
+the brain to the magneto, which is the spinal cord. The spinal cord
+works automatically and it doesn't wear itself out. The brain tires if
+it uses its energy.
+
+In walking you use the thought and the brain impulse to start the
+magneto, and then the spinal cord action is automatic.
+
+This automatic action of the spinal cord is a wise provision of nature
+to conserve strength.
+
+The spinal cord energy is what you might call automatic habit.
+
+For instance, in dressing and undressing yourself, you will recall that
+you put on or take off your clothes in regular order without giving the
+matter any thought. It is just habit.
+
+If you wish to demonstrate the difference between the control of the
+physical body by brain impulse, and the spinal cord impulse, try this
+some morning: Start out for your exercise and mentally frame sentences
+like this as you walk--"right step, left step, right step, left step,"
+and so on. Give thought to each step you have taken, and notice how
+tired you will be when you have gone half a mile.
+
+The next morning, start to walk naturally; give no thought to walking;
+keep your mind on the beauties of nature which you are passing, or
+indulge in pleasant soliloquy, and you will feel no fatigue.
+
+There isn't a bit of theory in this chapter; it is positive, practical
+sense that I have proved by my own experiences and by the experiences of
+everyone to whom I have made this suggestion of walking alone.
+
+The moral is this--walk every morning and walk ALONE.
+
+
+
+
+22.
+
+
+The body is made up of billions of little cells. These individual cells
+are in a state of perpetual activity. They exhaust, wear away, break
+down with work, and rebuild on food and rest. Every process of life--the
+beat of the heart, the throb of the brain in thought, the digestion of
+food, the excretion of waste--all are due to the activity of groups of
+highly specialized individual cells.
+
+[Sidenote: Body Waste.]
+
+Every cell uses up its own material and throws off poisonous by-products
+during activity. These by-products, or wastes, are very poisonous to the
+individual cell as well as to the entire organism. To get rid of this
+waste is one of the first duties of the system.
+
+It is with the body, made up of its countless millions of individual
+cells, just as it is with a city and its myriad people: the sewage of
+the community must be collected and disposed of. The city forms its
+poisons which we call sewage and the body its poisons, which we call
+excreta (or carbonic acid, urea, uric acid, faeces, etc.). It is no
+more important for a city to gather up and get ride of its poisonous
+sewage than for the animal organism to collect and excrete its
+cell-waste. Hence, the importance of maintaining normal and constant
+elimination throughout the body.
+
+[Sidenote: Health's Safety-First.]
+
+Elimination is kept up by the alimentary tract, the kidneys, the skin,
+and the lungs. These four are the great pipe-line sewerage systems, so
+to speak, by which the body throws off its gaseous, liquid and solid
+poisons.
+
+The lungs momentarily strain carbonic acid out of the blood and throw it
+out in the expired air. They likewise exhale other noxious matters from
+the system.
+
+The alimentary tract throws off faeces, made up of the waste tissue from
+the whole system, especially the digestive organs, as well as
+indigestible and non-nutritious portions of the food.
+
+The kidneys strain out urea, uric acid, and certain other poisons from
+the blood and eject them through the urinary tract.
+
+Finally the skin likewise is an excretory organ and exhales a very
+definite amount of gaseous and fluid waste in the course of each
+twenty-four hours.
+
+The skin throws off all the way from a pint to two quarts of liquid
+each day in the form of vapor.
+
+[Sidenote: Proper Functioning.]
+
+Thus, to carry on normal elimination from the body, the breathing,
+digesting, urinary and cutaneous systems must be kept working normally.
+To impair the work of any of these is to retard bodily drainage. To make
+certain that elimination is going on naturally, it is necessary to
+secure perfect functioning of lungs, bowels, kidneys and the skin.
+
+Any stoppage in the process of elimination means that some fault has
+crept into the work of one of these excretory systems. It must be plain
+now why a disorder of any one of these organs of elimination means so
+much more profound disturbance to the whole organization than merely
+disease in one structure. It means that waste products are retained
+which ought to be thrown out of the body; so straightway every cell in
+the body begins to be more or less affected. Some poisons disturb one
+organ more and some another, but in the end the whole body must
+inevitably be affected.
+
+Lack of exercise, bolting of food, eating soft, starchy things, failure
+to chew properly, failure to get enough roughage, insufficient water,
+insufficient fruit--these are the general causes of stoppage in the
+elimination processes.
+
+Drink one or two glasses of warm water, not hot, the first thing in the
+morning.
+
+Eat one or two apples, skins and all, every day. Eat toast, especially
+the crust. Eat cracked wheat or whole wheat bread often.
+
+Exercise plenty. Keep cheerful. Eat regularly.
+
+Very likely you eat too much. You don't need three big meals a day
+unless you work outdoors at hard physical labor.
+
+Your body is an engine. No use to keep the boiler red hot and two
+hundred pounds of steam on if your work is light.
+
+Good health depends upon proper assimilation and elimination as nature
+intended.
+
+Eat less, exercise more, you who work indoors. If you don't use this
+caution, you are just slowly killing yourself.
+
+
+
+
+23.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Never Say "Can't."]
+
+Many have the habit of keeping their minds on their weaknesses or their
+shortcomings. If they read of some one doing a great thing or making a
+worth-while accomplishment, they say: "I never could do such a thing."
+
+These persons are always saying, "I never have luck. I can't do this. I
+can't do that."
+
+Always knocking, always thinking "can't" instead of "can" makes for
+fear, irresoluteness, uncertainty and weakness of character.
+
+To say, "I can't, I haven't the ability, I am unlucky" makes you weak
+and knocks out all chance for doing things.
+
+Nothing comes out of the brain that wasn't burned in by thought. If you
+disparage yourself, belittle your capacity, or drown your good impulses
+with doubt and self-accusation, you are putting away a lot of bad
+thought in your brain, and no wonder you will lack in initiative,
+ambition, confidence and courage.
+
+To those who claim to be unlucky, I want to say you are not
+unlucky--you simply lack pluck.
+
+You start at undertakings with a handicap of fear. You have made up your
+mind that you can't accomplish. You are half beaten before the game
+starts. In place of the will to achieve, you approach your task in fear
+and trepidation. In place of confidence and courage and high
+aspirations, you set out on your journey with the millstone of doubt and
+irresolution around your neck.
+
+[Sidenote: Confidence and Success.]
+
+There is but one way to succeed. That is to cast fear and
+self-accusation aside, and throw your full weight into the struggle with
+a song on your lips and confidence in your heart. "Victory" should be
+your battlecry and "Confidence" should be emblazoned on your shield.
+
+Many a man has been whipped in a fight, defeated in a contest, or beaten
+at an undertaking, but he didn't show it or let the other fellow know
+it. He just kept on with a brave front, and finally the other fellow
+quit, mistaking grim determination, pluck and perseverance for strength
+and victory.
+
+Ethan Allen with his handful of men were asked to surrender by the
+British general with his superior force. By all the rights and rules of
+war, Ethan was licked, but he didn't give in. He replied: "Surrender
+h--ll; I've just commenced to fight." If Ethan had accused himself and
+said, "I can't whip that big bunch; there's no hope," he would have been
+whipped to a finish.
+
+Don't show the enemy or the world your weakness. Don't admit anything
+impossible that is capable of accomplishment.
+
+It's the "I can" man who wins. No man ever won a fight if he started out
+by saying, "I can't whip him, he is too much for me; I am no match for
+him, but I'll try."
+
+No person ever made success in business if he started in with
+uncertainty, lack of confidence and unbelief in his ability. Confidence
+has ever been half the battle.
+
+[Sidenote: The World's Judgment.]
+
+Knock yourself, and the world will accept you at your own estimate. Show
+streaks of yellow cowardice, and the mob will pounce on you like a pack
+of hungry wolves. Accuse yourself, curse your luck, belittle your worth,
+be afraid, and you will remain a mere bump on a log, unnoticed,
+uninteresting, uninvited.
+
+The world welcomes men who do things. The world judges by outward
+appearances. If your heart is sick, if your courage is low, don't show
+it. Put up a stiff attitude and act with confidence, and that attitude
+will carry you over many a pitfall and past many an obstacle.
+
+Show strength and the world will help you; show weakness and the world
+will shun you.
+
+You are prejudiced when it comes to judging yourself. You compare your
+weakness with your friends' strength, and this comparison is unfair; it
+makes you lose confidence.
+
+[Sidenote: Doubt and Belief.]
+
+Nothing hurts one worse than doubting one's own ability, assets, and
+character. When you find yourself experiencing doubt, or inability, or
+hard luck, turn square around and say: "Begone, doubt; henceforth I have
+belief."
+
+Say: "I have ability; I have pluck, and pluck means luck."
+
+Always express confidence, faith, courage, and cheer thoughts, whether
+you feel them or not. Do this heroically and persistently, and soon the
+fear shadows and weakness feelings will leave you, and you will be in
+reality strong, courageous, active, and will do things you never thought
+possible.
+
+"As a man thinketh, so is he." Always remember that.
+
+Get hold of your thoughts; make yourself think up, and have faith and
+courage. Hold to your resolve, and the whole world will change. You
+will prosper, you will have poise, and every once in a while happiness
+will come as a reward.
+
+No man will be more surprised at your complete change of attitude and
+character than yourself.
+
+Your problems can only be solved by yourself. Friends can advise, _I_
+can suggest, but YOU must act.
+
+Henceforth, never accuse yourself, never feel sorry for your condition
+or position, cut out fear thoughts,--be strong.
+
+Think faith, courage, cheer, confidence, and strength, and by-and-by the
+habit will be fixed and natural.
+
+This is as certain truth as I have ever experienced. I know it. I've
+tried it. I've watched others and the results are always good.
+
+Don't be passive and forget this chapter. Start right this minute to
+THINK RIGHT.
+
+And you will never regret and never forget this chapter on
+Self-accusation.
+
+
+
+
+24.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Dare to Dream.]
+
+The great colleges turn out thousands of graduates each year, and the
+great newspapers have much sport ridiculing them in funny pictures.
+Every great man was once a boy with a dream, and that dream came true
+because the boy had pep that made him stick to his ambition and kept him
+from being discouraged because of ridicule or obstacles.
+
+Thomas Carlyle, the poor Scotch tutor, dreamed he wanted to be a great
+author. His clothes were threadbare, his poverty apparent. Friends
+taunted and ridiculed him until, goaded to indignation, he cried: "I
+have better books in me than you have ever read." The crowd laughed
+incredulously and said: "Poor fellow, he's batty."
+
+Carlyle stuck to his dream and the world has the "History of Frederick
+the Great" and the "French Revolution" and "Sartor Resartus." When he
+had finished the manuscript of the "French Revolution," a careless maid
+built a fire with it. He wasn't discouraged, but went to work and wrote
+it over again and very likely better than he wrote it the first time.
+
+Bonaparte in the garden of his military school dreamed of being a great
+general. He stuck to his dream and he realized his hopes.
+
+Joseph Pulitzer, a poor emigrant, crawled in a cellar way in New York to
+sleep, and he dreamed of owning a great newspaper. His dream came true,
+and the newspaper is printed in a building erected on the spot where he
+dreamed in the cellar way.
+
+Livingston dreamed of exploring darkest Africa; his dream came true.
+
+Edison dreamed of great electrical discoveries. His monument is Menlo
+Park with its great laboratories.
+
+Ford dreamed of making an automobile for the purse-limited masses--he
+was jeered; to-day the world cheers him.
+
+My friend, Bert Perrine, was chucked off a stage in the middle of
+Idaho's great sage brush desert. He said to the driver, "Some day I'll
+own that stage and I'll use it for a chicken house."
+
+He dreamed and schemed, and to-day the desert is the famous Twin Falls
+country, blossoming like a rose. And on his beautiful ranch at Blue
+Lakes, that old stage is used for a chicken house.
+
+Rockefeller dreamed, Lincoln dreamed--so did Garfield, Wilson, Grant,
+Clay, Webster, Marshall Field, Richard W. Sears and all the other men
+who have done things worth while in the world.
+
+The great West is the result of dreams come true.
+
+Dream on, my boy; hitch your wagon to a star and stay hitched. That
+dream and that determination are the things that are to carry you over
+obstacles, past thorny ways, and through criticism, jeers and ridicule.
+
+Your time will come. Dream and scheme, and make your ideals materialize
+into living, pulsating realities.
+
+
+
+
+25.
+
+
+There are many persons who act and advocate ideals merely for
+effect--they are hypocrites.
+
+Here's a little true heart story that probably passed unnoticed except
+to a very few persons.
+
+[Sidenote: Real Charity.]
+
+Little Spencer Nelson, a poor boy, eight years old, recently died in a
+hospital with a little bank clasped to his breast. The bank held $3.41
+in pennies which the boy had saved to buy presents for the poor children
+in his city.
+
+The little hero had fought manfully through three months' suffering,
+enduring the torture of five lacerating operations. The pain failed to
+dim the spirit of unselfishness which burned brightly and clearly in his
+tired, fever-racked body.
+
+After each operation his mind became more securely fixed on his project
+to help bring cheer to poor children.
+
+The little savings bank was his companion, and each visitor was asked to
+contribute to his fund.
+
+Three hours before he died, a smile beautified his thin wasted face as
+the nurse dropped a dime in his bank. His last words--a message to his
+mother--were in a scarcely audible whisper, asking her to remember to
+use the money to make poor children happy.
+
+That was real charity; that boy had no hypocrisy in his heart.
+
+[Sidenote: Seek and You Will Find.]
+
+The daily paper chronicles instances of sensational charity, where men
+vie with each other to see who can give most and get the most
+advertising. These men overlook the wonderful opportunities at their
+door--they do not realize the beautiful love and charity that would stir
+in their hearts if they would but look into the out-of-the-way places
+and get direct connection with pain and suffering.
+
+Little Spencer looked from his cot and saw the suffering of other little
+children and he wanted to help them, and the very resolve and impulse
+made him forget his own pain and misery.
+
+In the Book of Good Deeds, the name of Spencer Nelson will be recorded
+as a sweeter act of charity than any million-dollar gift to a great
+institution.
+
+What one of you who read these lines can read the story of that little
+hero and not be touched by the generous love and beautiful conception of
+charity he possessed.
+
+I don't believe much in this far-away charity idea so many have.
+
+[Sidenote: Do Good Here At Home.]
+
+I believe in helping those near where I am rather than sending money to
+Siam. Poverty and destitution, unhappily, are familiar spectres at home,
+as elsewhere. He who seeks to do good will not need to range afar. He
+can find opportunity close at home, near by, where all of us can find it
+if we only look.
+
+It may be a pleasurable sensation for you to contribute fifty dollars to
+a missionary scheme in Siam, and get the Missionary report of the budget
+made up by the committee for the foreign missionary fund.
+
+I know that a bucket of coal in an empty stove, a basket of bread and a
+liberal hunk of round steak to the starving family around the corner
+brings the donor a better sensation.
+
+Take a trip to the hospitals, learn about the homes of the suffering
+patients in the charity ward, and you will resolve it's a better act to
+send flour to the poor than flowers to the rich.
+
+Little Spencer Nelson had the right idea of charity: definite,
+immediate help to those he could reach right where he was, rather than
+sending money to sufferers far, far away.
+
+Let your gifts be principally flour and beef; they help those who need
+help. Flowers are all right in their place, but there are more places
+where flour can be used to better purpose.
+
+I'm keener for filling the coffee can of my suffering neighbor than
+filling the coffers of the big charity five thousand miles away.
+
+I try to help both ways, but the home help pays the bigger dividends.
+What do you think about it?
+
+
+
+
+26.
+
+
+You have found a friend who has been so much help and comfort to you. I
+have such a friend too. To-night I am in the mood to think of that
+friend and write him a letter like this:
+
+[Sidenote: What I Think of You.]
+
+This is to You. It is for You. It is about You. You I have in mind and
+the good influence you have had on me. It is a happiness and
+satisfaction to know you, and to bask in the sunshine of you.
+
+The world is better because of you. You have helped to raise the
+average.
+
+You and your goodness--you do not appreciate what that means. You are so
+modest, so loath to think of yourself, so thoughtful of others, so
+unselfish that I must tell you of you and about you.
+
+You have a warm heart that throbs for others' woes and holds sympathy.
+The great world is cold, selfish, and cares little for others. But you
+are different; you are a great pillow of rest on which I and others who
+love you may lay our tired, weary heads, and you wrap your arms of
+friendship and goodness about us and feel our very heartbeats.
+
+[Sidenote: What I Love in You.]
+
+You with your great goodness, your quiet, sympathetic understanding--you
+soothe our troubled spirits and make us glad of you and glad we have the
+precious privilege of knowing you.
+
+Even now, as I am telling you how I love you, you are trying to wave me
+aside and stop me, but I am in the mood and I want to express myself.
+You know that it is a great sin of omission to refrain from expressing
+our gratitude for goodness extended to us.
+
+I want to express my gratitude. I do not want to be guilty of the sin of
+omission.
+
+So here, then, is this little message for you, to tell you that I
+appreciate you and love you, and these words will last after you are
+gone and after I am gone, to tell those of to-morrow about you and what
+those of to-day thought about you.
+
+Your life, your goodness, is an everlasting plant that will flourish in
+many hearts. Your influence will last beyond the calendar of time; it is
+indestructible. You have a great credit in the universal bank of good
+deeds, where you have deposited worth-while acts, deeds, kindnesses,
+cheer, help, friendship, sympathy, courage, gratitude, and all the most
+precious jewels of humanity.
+
+I am happy the very moment I think of you. I try to express myself but
+the feelings and emotions I would describe have not words or sentences
+to express them. You understand. You are so big in heart, so sensitive
+in fabric of feeling, so wise in understanding, that I want you to think
+and feel all the genuine, noble, lovable, appreciative thoughts you can
+gather together about the one you can most appreciate.
+
+Think hard, sincerely, deeply, about that one, with all your resources
+of beautiful thought. Think hard that way, and now you will begin to
+understand my feelings about you, and how I appreciate you.
+
+You, my inspiration, who are so sensitized to feeling, so delicately
+adjusted to read heart vibrations--you must feel this within me that I
+am trying to express. Not the love between sweethearts, not the love of
+kin, not the love of friends, but a great universal love I have for
+you--a love which all who are fortunate enough to know you have for you.
+
+It is a love you cannot return to me in equal measure, because you have
+not the object in me that can merit such love. That you should love me
+in the way I love you even in the smallest measure is satisfaction
+supreme.
+
+It is glorious to know you. You water the good impulses I have; you
+encourage all that is noble, elevating, and bettering, in me. I shall
+try to be like you--that is, so far as I can. You are my model; there is
+but one _You_. Many may copy you, none may equal you. You my comfort,
+you my joy. A great glorious _You_ that a little _I_ am trying to paint
+a picture of.
+
+How futile my efforts. I might as well try to improve the deep beautiful
+colors of the morning-glory, or try to retint the lily with a more
+beautiful white.
+
+And so I bid you good-bye, happy that there is such a one as you in the
+world--more happy that I know you, and most happy that I know how to
+appreciate you.
+
+The sum of all good things I can say is, "I love you," and the word
+"love" I use in its greatest, broadest sense, which covers all the good
+adjectives.
+
+This is what I think of YOU.
+
+
+
+
+27.
+
+
+There is a time in the business man's life, between the age of 48 and
+52, when he undergoes a pronounced change.
+
+More big men are cut off at 50 than at any other age between 45 and 60.
+
+From 48 to 52 most men change vitally in their physical and mental
+make-up.
+
+[Sidenote: Dangers of Middle Life.]
+
+Many men--hitherto straight, moral men--go to the bad at this time, and
+per contra, many men quit their immoral and health-hurting habits and
+change to moral men. This danger period is when the newly-rich find
+fault with the wives who have helped them to their success. They grow
+tired of their wives and seek the companionship of younger women.
+
+The divorce courts give most interesting figures on this point.
+
+At this danger period, men who have been high livers, voracious eaters
+and heavy drinkers find themselves victims of diabetes, Bright's disease
+or other forms of kidney trouble. The country is full of prematurely
+broken-down men who have failed to heed the danger signals along their
+way. To persist in self-indulgence is to invite disaster. You must
+deliberately set about to change your mode of living if you would avoid
+these shoals on which so many men of middle age have foundered.
+
+Almost every man between 48 and 52 who works indoors, eats too much,
+exercises too little, sleeps insufficiently.
+
+In this book I have made practical suggestions that have been tried in
+the furnace of experience and proven adequate. They have helped me; they
+will help you. They will enable you to gain pep and efficiency; they
+will give you a new lease on life and make life more worth living.
+
+[Sidenote: The Simple Life.]
+
+First, live simply; eat simply. If you have in the past, eaten rich
+foods, drunk fine wines, and have been what the world knows as a "good
+fellow," your course is clear. You must call a halt on yourself. This
+path leads inevitably to the graveyard. Follow the seven simple health
+suggestions laid down in an earlier chapter, and you will feel better,
+feel happier and will attack the day's work with vim and vigor.
+
+Avoid undue excitement. Excitement uses up nerve force. It is an energy
+consumer. Your mind needs repose as well as your body. When you have
+finished your day's work, leave business behind you. Do not drag it into
+your home. In the evening, occupy yourself with a good, worth-while
+book. Nothing is more conducive to calm and contentment.
+
+Let supper be your one hearty meal of the day. And after supper, play
+with the kids or joke with your wife; get a smile on your face. When you
+are home, interest yourself in home concerns. The "home men" are the men
+who live longest. They lead healthy, regular lives, and they keep alive
+the outside interests that make for peace, poise, content and happiness.
+
+Keep a sharp look-out for tendencies to change your habits and morals.
+
+At 50 you are walking on thin ice; look out, danger is near.
+
+After you are 55, your habits are pretty well established. If you have
+lived rightly till then, you're safe thereafter and very likely are on
+your way to a good ripe old age if you take reasonable care of
+yourself.
+
+
+
+
+28.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Our Sons.]
+
+We love our own the best; maybe that's why we indulge our own too much.
+Our duty to our boys; that's a subject as old as the hills, and it is as
+important as it is old. It is a subject that has come to the forefront
+in recent years. Multitudes of paid juvenile workers and sociological
+experts throughout the country are engaged in the work of keeping the
+youth of the nation healthily occupied and away from corrupting
+influences.
+
+Modern conditions have created a "boy problem" which was unknown two
+generations ago. Then there were no slums reeking with vice and squalor
+and ugliness. The era of great manufacturing enterprises was just
+beginning. There were no densely populated cities numbering millions of
+souls. Amusements were simple. Everywhere were stretches of open
+country, and boys were allowed to run wild in field and woodland and
+stream.
+
+[Sidenote: Times Have Changed.]
+
+The great cities of to-day have done away with all this. The good,
+old-fashioned, healthful recreations have disappeared in all but rural
+communities. In their place has come the lurid "movie" with its tales of
+crime and violence and passion. At every crowded street corner, vice
+beckons, and glaring signs lure the curious boy into the vicious cabaret
+and dance-hall.
+
+To-day I had the boy problem forcibly presented to me. I saw in a court
+twenty-four boys who had been brought before the Judge charged with
+petty crimes. Three were sent to the penitentiary, seven to the reform
+school and fourteen let go temporarily on good behavior.
+
+A friend of mine interested in criminology tells me the great bulk of
+hold-ups, thefts, burglaries and murders are committed by boys between
+16 and 22 years of age.
+
+These twenty-four boys I mentioned were just ordinary boys, capable of
+making good citizens if they had had the right kind of home treatment
+and surroundings. Most of them got in trouble through their association
+with the "gang" or the "bunch," or the "crowd," and this because daddy
+didn't have his hand on the rein.
+
+That boy must have companionship; he must have a confidant with whom he
+can share his joys, his sorrows, his hopes, his ambitions. If he
+doesn't get this comeraderie at home, he gets it "'round the corner."
+
+We know where the boy is when he is at school, but how few of us know
+the boy's doings between times.
+
+Pool halls tempt the boys, and these resorts are breeding places where
+filthy stories, criminal slang and evil practices are hatched.
+
+Pool halls and saloons invite and fascinate the boy. He sees the lights.
+There is a keen pleasure in watching the pink-shirted dude with
+cigarette in his mouth making fancy shots.
+
+There is no one to nag him or bother him; it gets to be his "hang-out,"
+and soon he drifts into a crowd that knows the trail to the red-light
+district.
+
+Painted fairies dazzle the giddy boy. It takes money to go the pace.
+Crime is gilded over with slang words. Stealing is called "easy money."
+Robbery is "turning a trick," and so on.
+
+A boy becomes what he lives on mentally and physically; that's the net
+of it.
+
+It is a common saying, but a good one, that the boys of to-day are the
+men of to-morrow. If you train a boy with care and kindness, he will
+grow up to be an honest and upright citizen. But let him run a wild,
+undisciplined course, leave him free to explore the crime-spots and
+plague-pools of the city, and sooner or later his moral fibre is
+weakened and ultimately snaps. At best he will become an indifferent
+citizen; at worst a drifter or a criminal.
+
+There is nothing better for a boy than discipline properly administered.
+And that brings up the whole matter of army life.
+
+[Sidenote: The Army: A Maker of Men.]
+
+The army is a great maker and developer of men. Boys who were headed for
+perdition have found in the army a new sense of honor and respect. The
+rigorous training, the idea of duty, the heroic traditions of the
+service--all these are renewers and rekindlers of manhood. Many a lad
+who has wasted his health, wealth and substance on the primrose path,
+has "come back" gloriously in the service of the flag.
+
+Look at the average soldier or sailor you meet. His skin is tanned by
+sun and wind to a deep brown. His eyes are crystal clear. There is youth
+and strength in his tread. There he stands, clean as a whistle. No fat,
+no flabbiness--just solid sinew and ruddy health. He is a living
+exponent of what military training can do for every boy in the country.
+
+Hard work, strength-building exercises, sufficient sleep, regular
+hours, simple, wholesome food, systematic training--these are the things
+the army and navy offers. And these are the things that make real men.
+
+But no training that school or church or army can give him relieves you,
+Dad, of your obligation to the boy. In the last analysis, it is _your_
+influence that will either make him or break him, for it is to you that
+he looks for guidance and comradeship in his most impressionable years.
+
+If you are his chum, if sister shares his amusements with him, if the
+family work and live on the "all for one and one for all" basis, if the
+boy is kept busy and interested, he can be easily trained.
+
+[Sidenote: Be Worth Copying.]
+
+Neglect him and he will neglect you. Love him and he will love you. Meet
+him half way, he's impressionable. Show him a kindness, he will respond.
+Show him a good example, he will follow. You have to be with him, or
+know where he is every minute.
+
+During his period of adolescence, say from twelve or thirteen years to
+sixteen or seventeen, that boy is a mass of plaster of paris, easily
+shaped while plastic, but once set, all but impossible to recast.
+
+That's the time, Dad, you must be on YOUR job with your boy.
+
+Your counsel, example, love, interest and teaching will MAKE the boy.
+
+Think of these things, Dad, and think hard, and think hard NOW.
+To-morrow may be too late.
+
+
+
+
+29.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Our Daughters.]
+
+Our daughters--how much we love them! How happy we are to have their
+fresh, smiling faces about us! Their girlish laughter lightens our home
+hours and creates an atmosphere of joy. What would we not give if we
+could but insure their happiness! Our fondest and most cherished hopes
+are bound up in them as they grow up under our eyes and blossom into
+womanhood.
+
+Girl, what a wonderful creature you can be. What a glorious success you
+can make of your life if you get the right start, find the right hands
+to help you, the right hearts to love you, and the right eyes to watch
+you, the right thoughts to make you, and the right ideals to guide you.
+
+There are so many influences to spoil you--so much convention, so much
+artificiality, so much snobbery, so much caste, so much foolish
+frivolity.
+
+Then there are the wrong examples, the wrong grooming, the wrong
+environments, the wrong influences surrounding you. Really, it is not
+to be wondered at why so many girls lose their heads and make a fizzle
+of their young lives.
+
+The fizzle is generally made because daddy and mama have a lot of
+foolish notions about bringing up girls. Especially is this so if the
+parents are wealthy.
+
+[Sidenote: The Wrong Way.]
+
+Here is the history of many a rich girl: She is born without welcome,
+fed on a bottle, reared by a nurse, grows up in a nursery, becomes
+estranged from her mother; later on, she is sent away to school, mixes
+with a lot of other rich girls, gets lots of foolish notions, false
+estimates, and prejudiced views. She graduates and comes home, and then,
+to commemorate the event, there are a lot of "doings" which she attends.
+Following this is the show-off, which is called a debut.
+
+She is exhibited like a filly at the horse show, and some high-collared
+young man wins her head, although she thinks it's her heart. She
+believes it is the proper time for her to marry, and he is such "a swell
+fellow," he is such "good company," and he "dances so well"--these
+qualities win her head.
+
+So the girl marries and has children; the husband goes broke, and the
+girl awakens to the necessity of coming down from her pedestal, facing
+stern necessity, and raising her children as her mother should have
+raised her.
+
+That's the picture of the poor rich girl whose parents are to blame for
+the nonsense she crammed into her head.
+
+But, you, Girl--you are going to learn your cooking on a gas range
+instead of a chafing dish; you'll learn to bake bread before fudge;
+you'll learn how to cook solids before you learn to make salads.
+
+You will combine simplicity, sentiment, sense sereneness, sweetness,
+rather than envy, frills, feathers and foolishness.
+
+God's noblest calling for woman is the raising of children and the
+founding of a home.
+
+[Sidenote: Cooking and Sewing.]
+
+To cook and sew is a higher duty and better occupation than bridge
+parties and society. Not that you must cook and sew, my dear, but that
+you should be able to in case the need should arise. With the ability to
+cook and sew, you can properly direct the cook or seamstress, and they
+will respect you for your education.
+
+I want you to be golden girls--girls who love home and children; girls
+who love simple things, natural things. I want you to be sweet rather
+than pretty, lovable rather than popular.
+
+Do not look upon matrimony as a means to provide food and finery for
+yourself.
+
+Do not be ashamed of an old-fashioned mother. Do not be a "good fellow."
+Do not be afraid to say, "I can't afford it."
+
+Help the family. Be part of it, and not apart from it.
+
+When you are old enough to have a beau, do not be afraid to bring him
+into your home, no matter how humble it is.
+
+Do not esteem your boy friends for the amount of money they spend on
+your entertainment. Happiness does not consist of lobster-suppers and
+taxi-rides to the theatre. Ten cents will bring just as much real
+happiness as ten dollars spent for mere display.
+
+Be modest, girls; it is your greatest asset.
+
+Don't gossip or belittle other girls. Find the good you can say of
+others; that quality makes you more attractive.
+
+Watch out for candied words and flattery; these things mark the
+hypocrite, and a hypocrite is an abomination. Flattery is a practiced
+deceit--a dishonorable bait to catch affections.
+
+Do not allow any young man to relate a story in your presence that has
+the slightest risque turn to it.
+
+Show by your words and your actions that such presumption is an insult.
+
+Be square with yourself; be square to the man who is after your heart.
+Put yourself mentally in the place of a wife when a man gets serious.
+
+[Sidenote: The Right Man.]
+
+Don't hurry, girls; don't judge the man by his money prospects but by
+his character and ambition. Have nothing to do with any young suitor who
+isn't always kind, considerate and attentive to his mother. And when
+real love comes to you and you decide to marry, marry a man of character
+who courts you in the sweet, simple, old way.
+
+If a young man spends money extravagantly before marriage, hard times
+will always be around during his married life.
+
+The most precious possessions in the world are happiness and love, and
+these come from simple things, genuineness, and usefulness.
+
+The painted, powdered, tinsel, fluff, feathers and furbelow girl may be
+a dashing creature now, and you may envy her, but you, with your quiet,
+sweet, simple, sensible ways--you will win real love, real respect, real
+affection, real pleasures, real satisfaction, in all the days to come;
+you will make a success of your life.
+
+Frills and feathers may have an attraction for the girl who makes a
+fizzle of her life, but sweetness and simplicity, sentiment and sense,
+are precious jewels that will endure for all time.
+
+[Sidenote: The Road to Unhappiness.]
+
+The world is full of new-fashioned, slangy, dancy, fancy, foolish girls
+who marry for style, stunts and society, and their married life is
+failure, worry and regret. They do not realize, poor things, until it is
+too late, that money and luxury are not enough to bring happiness. When
+this truth comes home to them, there is nothing left but disillusion,
+heartache and sorrow.
+
+Be the golden, pure, old-fashioned, sweet, simple, quiet, modest girl
+who knows things, rather than one who is a show-off girl.
+
+When the right young man comes along, he will recognize the kind of girl
+you are when he meets you. He will see in you a girl of pure gold; a
+sweet, natural, sensible girl, who will be a helpmate to him and not a
+drawback.
+
+So then, here is the hope that you, girl, will start right, keep right,
+and end right. I want you to think of sense, sentiment, and simplicity
+rather than dances, dollars, duds and doings.
+
+I want your life to be one of poise, happiness and serenity instead of
+noise, worry and nerves.
+
+This little message is all for you--GIRL.
+
+
+
+
+30.
+
+
+Many churches to-day are running to extremes in one way or another.
+
+On the one hand, they are conducted along the lines of form, ceremony
+and ritualism; the other extreme results in excitement, ecstasy and
+fanaticism.
+
+The church of forms, rituals and ceremonies attracts the passive who are
+willing to let the priest or pastor or prelate take charge of the
+religious work while they, the attendants or worshippers, sit quietly by
+and say "amen" and join in the responses.
+
+[Sidenote: Real Religion.]
+
+Paul said, "Away with those forms." Christ, in ministering to humanity,
+gave no forms and made no set sentences for his followers. The Lord's
+Prayer was given with the admonition, "After this manner pray ye," and
+certainly not with the command, "Pray ye with these words."
+
+Form, ceremony and ritual are much like most associated charities--a
+sort of convention. Forms cannot express the deep emotions, the natural
+longings, or the human desires; they are echoes, hollow and
+unsatisfying.
+
+For those who do not feel, for those who do not act, for those who
+belong to churches because of convention, or for social reasons, forms
+and frills fill the bill.
+
+Form is an exterior religion, an outward show. Form doesn't touch the
+heart or awaken the soul. Form in religion is like a formal dinner. It
+is a gaudy display rather than a plan to satisfy human heart hunger.
+
+[Sidenote: "Scare-You-to-Death" Method.]
+
+Opposite to formal religion is the frenzied "scare-you-to-death"
+excitement method, which relies upon mental intoxication to stir the
+people. Like other forms of intoxication, the effect soon wears off.
+
+I have little patience or sympathy for the business men who hire
+professional evangelists to come to town to start revivals. The
+sensational revivalists have too acute an appreciation of the dollar to
+convince me of their sincerity in their work.
+
+A laborer is worthy of his hire, and a preacher, teacher or benefactor
+of any sort should be well paid. But when I see these big guns taking
+away from ten to one hundred thousand dollars in cold cash for a three
+weeks' campaign converting the poor suffering people, the thought comes
+to me that if the evangelist were sincere, he would buy a lot of bread,
+coal and underwear, and hire a lot of trained nurses with a big part of
+that money.
+
+Christ and his Apostles were of the people; they worked with and among
+the people; they had no committees, no guarantees and no business men's
+subscription lists.
+
+It's mighty hard to read about these sensational evangelists taking in
+thousands of dollars for a couple of weeks' revival meetings, and
+harmonize that religion with the religion of Christ, the carpenter, and
+his Apostles, who were fishermen and workmen.
+
+[Sidenote: How They Do It.]
+
+The exciting, intoxicating, frenzied revival method is pretty much the
+same in its working wherever it is practised. The evangelist starts in
+with the song, "Where is My Wandering Boy To-night;" then follows the
+picture of mother, which is painted with sobs of blood. Then follows
+mother's death-bed scene until the audience is in tears. Gesticulation,
+mimicry, acting, sensationalism, slang and weepy stories follow, until
+the ferment of excitement is developed to a high pitch, and droves flock
+down the sawdust trail to be made over on the instant into sanctified
+beings.
+
+The evangelist stays until his engagement is up, and then departs with a
+pocket full of nice fat bank drafts.
+
+[Sidenote: An Old-Time Method.]
+
+But there is nothing new about this method. It is as old as humanity. It
+is the same method that is practised in the more remote and uncivilized
+portions of the world to-day, where garishly painted savages congregate
+and render homage to their gods in an orgy of yelling, whooping and
+beating of the tom-tom.
+
+It is a sad commentary on the established profession of the ministry
+that sensational professionals are called in and paid fabulous prices to
+convert the people in their community.
+
+I do not take much stock in either the frigid form-and-ceremonial method
+with its frills, or the frenzied fire-and-brimstone, scare-you-to-it
+extreme.
+
+Somewhere between these extremes is the rational, natural, sane road to
+travel--the religion of brotherly love; of cheers, not tears; of hope,
+not fear; of courage, not weakness; of joy, not sorrow; of help, not
+hindrance.
+
+[Sidenote: The Religion of Love.]
+
+The religion that makes us love one another here--not the kind that says
+we shall know each other there; the religion that has to do with human
+passions, human trials, human needs, instead of the frigid form or the
+fevered frenzy; the religion that avoids the extremes of heat and
+cold--that's the kind the world needs most.
+
+Christ taught love, kindness, charity. He spoke not of beautiful
+churches and opera-singing choirs. He spoke not of robes, vestments,
+forms or rituals.
+
+One of the most beautiful things in the Bible is the story of the good
+Samaritan with his simple, unostentatious aid to a wounded man--a man
+whom the Samaritan knew as an enemy of his people, but who was none the
+less a brother. And you will remember how the priest of the temple--the
+man who taught charity and love--drew up his skirts and passed the
+wounded man by.
+
+
+
+
+31.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Love of Country.]
+
+Patriotism--one's love for one's country--is a natural and a beautiful
+sentiment. With the spirit of idealism behind it, it becomes one of the
+noblest sentiments that has been developed in the course of humanity's
+long upward march to civilization.
+
+To-day, on Europe's battlefields, millions of men are hazarding their
+lives. They do so gladly, willingly, with a firm and reasoned conviction
+in the justice of the cause for which they fight. That is intelligent
+patriotism--the kind of patriotism that is based on understanding and
+knowledge.
+
+But the world to-day is conscious that there is another kind of
+patriotism--a false patriotism that is fostered and fomented by
+ambitious governments for purposes of aggression and aggrandizement.
+
+This false patriotism is not a free or voluntary thing. It is the blind,
+instinctive feeling of sheep-like men who have been bred beneath the
+yoke of servility and obedience and are like clay in the hands of their
+overlords. They know not why they fight, but through fear or
+intimidation or force, they slavishly submit to the will of their Kaiser
+or Emperor and his minions.
+
+This great war, and most every great war of the past, was made possible
+by a distorted understanding of patriotism. This false patriotism is one
+of the narrowest and most cruel forces in the world, and when linked
+with militarism, it becomes the most dangerous. It causes wars, waste
+and desolation. It creates jealousies, inspires jingoism and
+braggadocio, keeps alive the fight spirit, and menaces the peace and
+security of nations.
+
+[Sidenote: Militarism.]
+
+Militaristic rulers, fired by selfish egotism, know full well what a
+powerful force patriotism is, and they nurse the babes with fatherland
+stuff and give them tin soldiers to play with and tin helmets to wear.
+
+Patriotism, when it reflects love of the place of one's nativity, when
+it is based on home ties and associations, is a beautiful and touching
+thing. But when unscrupulous autocrats utilize this sentiment for their
+own aggressive purposes, it becomes a menace that must be put down if
+other nations are to enjoy the blessings of peace and liberty.
+
+[Sidenote: False Patriotism a Menace.]
+
+To keep this false patriotism alive, wars must be made, so that human
+blood can be secured to keep the monster from famishing. And so, on
+slight pretexts, or no pretexts at all, the war lords and imperial
+autocrats rattle their swords in their scabbards and let loose the
+avalanche of war on the world.
+
+Such patriotism is failure and worse than failure. It is a reversion to
+the brute age of mankind. It flings a moral challenge to the world that
+the world must either accept or perish.
+
+So much for this monstrous perversion of Right and Reason that has
+turned Europe into a shambles, and has banded the civilized nations of
+the world together in a mighty struggle for freedom and democracy.
+
+True patriotism is one of the world's constructive forces. It overleaps
+national frontiers, and is inspired by the ideals of international
+peace, good-will and amity. It looks forward to the time when national
+barriers will be let down, and the brotherhood of man will be recognized
+the world over.
+
+Such patriotism is the patriotism of Right Makes Might--not Might Makes
+Right. It is the kind of patriotism that prevails only among the free,
+democratic, peace-loving peoples of the world who are fighting to-day
+for the preservation of free institutions and the rights of humanity.
+
+The opposite sort of patriotism is the autocratic, militaristic kind
+that has furnished the world with an example of savage ferocity and
+vindictive cruelty that it will not soon forget.
+
+In this great struggle, we see Democracy ranged against Autocracy, Right
+against Might, True Patriotism against False Patriotism. The Right will
+triumph, as it always has, when pitted against the forces of hate, greed
+and reaction.
+
+
+
+
+32.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Happy Medium.]
+
+Danger lies in extremes. Too much of anything is bad for the human
+being's health. There is a certain comfortable proportion of exercise
+and rest which, when mixed together, will give bodily efficiency. Too
+much exercise is bad, too little is bad.
+
+Until recent years, our vocations and the habit of going to or from our
+places of business gave us a well-balanced amount of exercise, rest,
+work and pleasure, and all went well.
+
+Lately, we hear much about worry, neurasthenia, nervous prostration and
+the like. There are several contributing causes to the mental and
+physical ills which are caused by "nerves."
+
+First of all, we have an epidemic of labor-saving devices. The principal
+argument used by the manufacturer of a labor-saving device is, "It makes
+money and saves work." Making money and getting soft snaps seem to be
+the objectives of most human beings.
+
+The labor-saving devices take away exercise. The machine does the work.
+The artisan simply feeds the hopper, puts in a new roll, or drops in
+the material. He sits down and watches the wheels go around, likely
+smoking a cigarette in the meanwhile, and more than likely reading the
+sporting sheet of a yellow newspaper.
+
+[Sidenote: Changed Conditions of Work.]
+
+Possibly few of my readers have given the matter serious thought, and
+they will be astounded at the changed conditions of work which have come
+into our modern life. It will be interesting to note here some of these
+changes.
+
+Men used to live within walking distance of their work. Now the electric
+street railway and the speedy automobile have eliminated the necessity
+for much walking.
+
+Men used to climb stairs. The elevator has now so accustomed us to the
+conveniences that stairs are taboo.
+
+Machines have replaced muscles. The old printer walked from case to case
+and got exercise. To-day he sits in an easy backed chair and uses a
+linotype.
+
+Telephoning is quicker than traveling. No one "runs for a doctor."
+
+Our houses have electric washers, electric irons and many other
+labor-saving devices.
+
+Even the farmer has his telephone, his auto, his riding plow, his
+milking machine and his cream separator.
+
+In the stores, the cash boy has disappeared. The cash carrier takes the
+money to a girl who sits in the office, a machine makes the change, and
+another machine does her mathematics.
+
+[Sidenote: Perils of Inactivity.]
+
+The modern idea of efficiency puts a premium on the sedentary feature of
+occupations, and employees are frequently automatons that sit. The
+business man sits at his desk, sits in a comfortable automobile as he
+goes home, sits at the dinner table and sits all evening at the theater,
+or at the card table. It is sit, sit, sit until he gets a big abdomen, a
+puffy skin and a bad liver.
+
+He tries to counteract this with forced exercise in a gymnasium or a
+couple of hours golfing a week. Very likely, his golfing is more
+interesting because of the side bets than because of the exercise.
+
+We are losing out on the natural, pleasurable, and practical exercises,
+mixed in the right proportions to promote physical poise and health.
+Things are too easy, luxury and comfort too teasing, for the ordinary
+mortal to resist, and the great mob sits or rides hundreds of times when
+they should stand or walk.
+
+When my objective point is five or six blocks, I walk, and I think on
+the way. I probably get in from two to four miles of walking every day,
+which my friends would save by riding in the street cars or autos.
+
+I walk to my office every morning--a distance of nearly four miles.
+
+I walk alone, so that I may relax and not expend conscious effort as is
+the case when I walk with another.
+
+That morning walk prevents me from reading slush and worthless news, and
+relieves me of the necessity of talking and using up nerve energy.
+
+I get the worth-while news from my paper by the headlines and by trained
+ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.
+
+[Sidenote: Four Great Body-Builders.]
+
+I just feel fine all the time, and it's because I get to bed early,
+sleep plenty, exercise naturally, think properly and get the four great
+body-builders in plenty: air, water, sunshine, food; and the other four
+great health-builders, which are: good thought, good exercise, good
+rest, and good cheer.
+
+The great crowd aims at ease, and so the business man sits and loses out
+on the exercise his body and mind must have. And therefore the great
+crowd pays tribute to doctors, sanitariums, rest cures, fake tonics,
+worthless medicines, freakish diet fads, and crazy cults, isms, and
+discoveries that claim to bring health by the easy, lazy, comfortable
+sitting route.
+
+Believe me, dear reader, it is not in the cards to play the game of
+health that way. "There ain't no sich animal" said the ruben as he saw
+the giraffe in the circus, and likewise, there "aint no sich thing" as
+health and happiness for the man who persistently antagonizes Nature,
+and hunts ease where exercise is demanded.
+
+The law of compensation is inexorable in its demand that you have to pay
+for what you get and that you can't get worth-while things by worthless
+plans.
+
+You must exercise enough to balance things, to clear the system, to
+preserve your strength; it doesn't take much time.
+
+
+
+
+33.
+
+
+This afternoon I am sitting on a glacial rock in the forest at the foot
+of Mount Shasta. A beautiful spot in which to rest and a glorious page
+from the book of nature to read.
+
+[Sidenote: Back to Nature.]
+
+A canopy of deepest blue sky above, with sunshine unstopped by clouds.
+The rays of old Sol pulsate themselves into an endless variety of
+flowers, plants and vegetable life which Mother Earth has given birth
+to. Glorious trees of magnificent size reach up into the blue and give
+us shade. Ozone sweeps gently through the forest, impregnated with the
+perfume of fir, balsam, cedar, pine and flowers.
+
+In this spot, nature has thrown up mountains of volcanic rock, which
+hold the winter's snow in everlasting supply to quench the thirst of
+plant, of animal, and of the millions of humans in the lower country.
+
+The whole hillside around me is a community of springs of crystal water
+laden with iron and precious salts. It is the breast of Mother Earth
+which nurses her offspring.
+
+Here are no noises of the street; the newsboy's cry of "extra" is not
+heard. The raucous voice of the peddler, the din of trucks, the honk of
+automobiles, the clatter of the city--all these are absent.
+
+There is no noise here--just the sweet music of falling water, and the
+aeolian lullaby made by the breeze playing on the pine needles.
+
+My eyes take in a panorama of beautiful nature in colors and contrasts
+that would give stage fright to any artist who tried to paint the scenes
+on canvas.
+
+[Sidenote: Gaining Pep.]
+
+I am getting pep. This is my treatment for tired nerves; 'tis the
+"medcin' of the hills;" 'tis nature's cure, and how it brings the pill
+box and the bottle of tonic into contempt! I'm letting down the high
+tension voltage and getting the calm, natural pulsation that nature
+intended the human machine to have.
+
+So quiet, so peaceful, so natural is the view that I drink in
+inspiration of a worth-while kind. No war news to read, no records of
+tragedy, no degrading chronicles of man's passions, of man's meanness
+and man's selfishness.
+
+A little chipmunk sits upright on a rock before me wondering at the
+movements of my yellow pencil and the black mark it makes on the paper.
+
+A delicate lace-winged insect lights on my tablet, and a saucy "camp
+robber," or mutton bird, wonders at the unusual sight of me, the big man
+animal brother. A big beetle is getting his provisions for the winter. I
+recognize his occupation, for I've read about him in Fabre's wonderful
+books on insect life.
+
+[Sidenote: Nature's Lodge.]
+
+Here, in the sanctum sanctorum of the forest, I am made a member of
+Nature's lodge, and the ants and bugs and beetles and flowers and plants
+and trees are initiating me and telling me the secrets of the order. I
+can only tell you, who are in the great busy world outside, the lessons
+and morals. The real secrets I must not tell; you will receive them when
+you, too, come to the hills and forests, and sit down on a rock alone
+and go through the initiation.
+
+You are invited to come in; your application is approved, and you are
+eligible to membership.
+
+Come to Nature's lodge-meeting and clear away the cobwebs from your
+weary brain; get inspiration and be a man again.
+
+Come--soothe and rest and build up those shredded, weakened, tired,
+weary nerves. Let the sun put its coat of health on you, and let the
+ozone put the red blood of strength in your veins.
+
+[Sidenote: Rest and Recreate.]
+
+Come and get perfect brain and body-resting sleep. Come to this
+wonderful, happy, helpful lodge and get a store of energy, and an
+abundance of vital ammunition with which to make the fight, when you go
+back to your factory or office. The doctor can lance the carbuncle, but
+Nature's outdoor medicine will prevent your having a carbuncle.
+
+The doctor can stop a pain with a poison drug, but Nature's outdoor
+medicine will prevent your having the disorder which makes the pain.
+
+No, brother, you can't get health out of a bottle or a pill box. But you
+_can_ get it from Mother Nature's laboratory, where she compounds air,
+water, sunshine, beauty, music, thought; where she gives you exercise
+and rest, health, happiness, all summed up into cashable assets for the
+human in the shape of poise, efficiency and peace.
+
+
+
+
+34.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Mother.]
+
+Mother, you are the one person in all the world whose kindness was never
+the preface to a request. That's the sweetest tribute we can pay you,
+and the most truthful one. It covers devotion, love, sentiment,
+motherhood, and all the noble attributes that go to make the word
+"Mother" the most hallowed, most sacred, most beautiful word in the
+English language.
+
+There are not words or sentences that can express to you what we think
+of you or convey our appreciation of you.
+
+You want our love; you have it. You should be told of our love; we tell
+you. Appreciation and gratitude are payments on account, but with all
+our appreciation and with our whole life's gratitude, the debt we are
+under can never be paid.
+
+  "We have careful words for the stranger,
+    And smiles for the some-time guest--
+  But oft to our own the bitter tone,
+    Though we love our own the best."
+
+We've hurt you, Mother, many times, by our thoughtlessness and by the
+resentment we felt over your plans and your views about the things we
+did, and you have had heartaches because of such actions of ours.
+
+[Sidenote: The Mother Love.]
+
+Forgive us, Mother, we're sorry. And there you are, dear; the moment we
+ask your forgiveness, your great, tender, loving heart has forgiven us
+and erased the marks of transgression. Always thinking of us, always
+excusing us, always doing for us, always watching us and always loving
+us in the most unselfish way.
+
+We love you, Mother; we appreciate you. We are going to show our
+appreciation and love so much more from now on. We have just come to our
+senses and realized what a wonderful, necessary, helpful being you are.
+
+Your sweetness, your gentleness, your goodness, your love, are parts of
+you. They all go to make up that word "Mother."
+
+Your life, your acts, your example, your Motherhood, have all helped the
+world so much more than you will ever know.
+
+In the everlasting record of good deeds, your name is in gold.
+
+In the everlasting memory of those who appreciate you, your face, your
+life, is a sacred, helpful picture that grows more beautiful as the days
+pass.
+
+In tenderness, in appreciation, in love, let us dedicate these thoughts
+and voice these expressions to Mother, who gives her life by inches, and
+who would give it all on the instant for her children, if necessity
+called for the sacrifice.
+
+How feeble are words when we try to describe Mother!
+
+
+
+
+35.
+
+
+This is your inning, Dad.
+
+[Sidenote: Just Dad.]
+
+There have been so many beautiful things written about Mother and all
+the rest of the family that it is high time we should tell you how much
+we love you and how much we appreciate you.
+
+You've worked so hard; you've been so ambitious to do things for your
+loved ones, and they have accepted your sacrifice and work and
+watchfulness as matter of fact.
+
+You've had dreams of a some day when you would relax and play and enjoy,
+but you have set that some day too far ahead. You consider yourself only
+after all your loved ones are comfortable and happy, and time is
+passing, Dad.
+
+You are too unselfish, too much centered in that some day. Let's change
+things a bit, Dad. Sometimes the "some day" doesn't come.
+
+You are entitled to happiness and pleasure and health and joy right
+here, now, to-day. It's your duty to have them.
+
+Your loved ones do not want you to spend your health in getting wealth.
+They don't want to see you worn-out, tired, weary and unhappy, in the
+evening of your life. Besides it's your duty to let them share the
+responsibility, and work out their own problems. They will be better
+equipped for life after you are gone if you let them gain knowledge by
+practical experience.
+
+[Sidenote: Keep Alive the Spirit of Youth.]
+
+Come on, Dad; get in the group and enjoy things now and you will live
+longer, and get more out of life, and give more pleasure to your loved
+ones. Get in the game, Dad; let's see the old light and twinkle in your
+eyes; let's have the sunshine on your face; the love-light on your lips,
+and the happiness in your heart.
+
+Leave your cares at the office; prepare your mind for play, and you will
+feel so much better and stronger and so much more successful in your
+business.
+
+We don't want to hear any more sh-h-h--sh-h-h--or whispers when you come
+home. We don't want to feel that uncomfortable feeling of restraint;
+let's laugh and sing and love and play--let's make your home-coming a
+joyous event.
+
+We all love you, Dad, but you haven't made it as comfortable as you
+might for us when we try to express our love. You've been too tired,
+too busy, too much occupied with those business thoughts.
+
+Don't you see how we love you and how we appreciate you? Don't you know
+that there is no one in the world who can take the place of Dad?
+
+Keep your heart young, Dad; we will help if you only say, "Come on." We
+are waiting for the signal. Let's start the new schedule tonight. Come
+on, Dad, what do you say?
+
+
+
+
+36.
+
+
+[Sidenote: What Our Bodies are Composed Of.]
+
+We speak of the three kingdoms: the animal, the vegetable and the
+mineral kingdoms, and every substance is classified into one of these.
+The exact truth is there is but one kingdom, which is the mineral. The
+vegetable substances and animal combinations are made of mineral
+elements.
+
+In a rough way we distinguish the mineral kingdom as those substances
+called elements, such as iron, sulphur, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, sodium
+and the like.
+
+These elements are unchangeable in themselves; they do not grow. The
+animal is made of mineral elements associated in certain proportions,
+such as albumin, carbon, lime, water, salt and the like. The vegetable
+kingdom also consists of these various chemical combinations.
+
+Seed, when planted, extracts the minerals from the air and the earth and
+combines them into a plant, which grows and has for its object the
+making of seeds to reproduce and perpetuate itself.
+
+The plant has life, but it has no spiritual or mental equipment, and
+therein vegetable life differs from the animal life. The animal eats
+vegetable and animal flesh. Through the vegetable he gets the mineral
+matter necessary for body-building. He also gets a plentiful supply of
+mineral from the flesh he eats, which flesh was first built up through
+the vegetables the animal ate.
+
+These are definite facts.
+
+The human body may be analyzed and separated into something like a dozen
+substances, among which are water, which is three-fourths of the body's
+structure, carbon, lime, phosphorus, iron, potassium, salt and so on.
+
+By reading a book on anatomy you can learn just exactly the proportions
+of the substances in the human body.
+
+All these chemicals are formed in the shape of little cells, myriads of
+which are in the body. These cells are constantly being destroyed and
+new ones made to take their place.
+
+Parts of the body are replaced every twenty-four hours; other parts less
+often.
+
+[Sidenote: What Our Bodies Need.]
+
+Scientists tell us that the whole body is replaced every seven years.
+Every move you make destroys cells which nature has to replace. Isn't it
+reasonable then to conclude that if a man should fail to eat enough
+lime for his body-building, his bones would suffer? If he does not get
+enough iron, his blood will suffer, and so on. I am convinced that most
+physical ailments are caused by a deficiency of the mineral elements in
+the body.
+
+Phosphorus and potash are necessary to human welfare. These elements are
+in the husk of the wheat, and when the husk is taken off in making
+flour, the resulting product is mostly starch. The person who lives
+mostly on white bread will suffer from lack of phosphorus and potash.
+
+Nothing could be better for the health of the American people than the
+nation-wide food campaigns the government is conducting. The educational
+value of these campaigns is enormous.
+
+Eat less wheat! White bread is unessential. Bran, or whole wheat bread,
+is far more healthful and nourishing, and contains more of the elements
+the human body needs.
+
+Eat more fruit. People do not eat enough fruit. Every year thousands of
+bushels of peaches and grapes and other fruit go to waste because the
+demand is not great enough to ship the entire output to the great
+consuming centers.
+
+Study your body's needs. Health is maintained at its proper level only
+so long as you eat carefully and wisely.
+
+
+
+
+37.
+
+
+The practice of medicine in the past has been directed towards the
+curing of disease and physical ailments already developed. The practice
+of medicine in the future is to be along preventive lines. Science is
+showing us how to prevent infection. Science is fighting the deadly
+microbe which comes to us in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and
+the food we eat, and the infected things we touch.
+
+[Sidenote: The "Why" of Disease.]
+
+Nature has supplied the human body with a home guard of necessary
+bacteria, and in the circulation system are phagocytes which fight the
+invading microbes and generally destroy them. When the system is
+weakened through disease, through lack of exercise, or through improper
+food, disease has an easy time.
+
+I want you to remember this golden prescription. It is composed of the
+following: Good Air, Good Water, Good Sunshine, Good Food, Good
+Exercise, Good Cheer, Good Rest and Good Thought. If you take this
+golden prescription, you will make of yourself a giant in brain and
+brawn strength.
+
+You can't get health out of a bottle. You can't get the system to absorb
+iron if you take it in the form of tincture of iron. You can eat a pound
+of rust, which is oxide of iron, and none of that iron will be absorbed
+in the system.
+
+[Sidenote: What to Eat.]
+
+As I have explained in another chapter, you must take the mineral in the
+system through the vegetable route. You will get iron that will be
+assimilated when you eat beefsteak. Beefsteak has blood; the blood has
+iron. You will also get iron when you eat spinach.
+
+Every element necessary for your body is found in some vegetable or
+animal food; therefore, you should refrain from confining yourself to a
+very few articles of food.
+
+[Sidenote: Fads, Cults, Isms.]
+
+Don't pay any attention to the faddist who gives you a rigorous diet or
+unpalatable food. You simply make yourself miserable, and you generate
+more worry and unhappiness by your discipline than the good you get from
+these freak fads. There are a thousand different fads and cults and
+isms, each one claiming to be right. Probably each one contains a small
+portion of right. But it is a sure thing that The Right is too big a
+thing to be confined within narrow formulae and creeds.
+
+We all eat too much meat, but that a strict vegetarian diet is the
+necessary thing for good health I deny. The sheep, the cow, and horse
+are vegetarians, and they are short lived. The eagle, the lion, the man,
+eat animal food, and they are long lived.
+
+I may be prejudiced, but it does seem to me that the strict vegetarians
+are a skinny, sallow-looking lot of humans, speaking generally. I do
+find that the healthier specimens of vegetarians are those who eat
+plenty of eggs and drink plenty of milk, both of which are animal food,
+and both of which have nearly all the elements necessary to sustain
+life.
+
+I don't like fads in the matter of eating. The amount a person consumes
+should be in exact accord with the body's requirements--neither more nor
+less.
+
+The human body is a machine from a food standpoint. It is an engine that
+has work to do, and accordingly the amount of fuel necessary for the
+engine should be in proportion to the amount of work that the engine is
+called on to perform.
+
+[Sidenote: Eat Less, Exercise More.]
+
+The majority of city-dwelling people eat too much. This is especially
+true of men in sedentary occupations, and women whose household
+duties are light. If your engine needs twenty pounds of steam,
+how foolish it is to keep up a hundred pounds pressure! If you had
+five-horsepower work to perform, how foolish it would be to install
+a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound engine!
+
+Eat less of everything. Fat and flabbiness and over-feeding is a
+national vice with us. The fashionable cafes and restaurants are
+thronged with puffy, heavy-jowled men and women, eating and drinking.
+Hotels and food-purveyors are constantly inventing new palate-tickling
+dishes to tempt your appetite. Orchestras and dramatic troupes are
+engaged to entertain and amuse you while you overload your stomach, take
+on fat, and lay the foundation for future cases of indigestion or
+dyspepsia.
+
+There is no escaping a day of reckoning for such mistreatment of
+yourself. If you would keep yourself fit, it is important that you eat
+only what is necessary to maintain yourself at normal weight and
+strength.
+
+You do not often find dyspepsia or indigestion among men or women who
+work hard physically. Isn't it reasonable to suppose that this is
+because they work hard?
+
+You who work indoors, with little physical exercise, will find wonderful
+benefits if you will cut down the fuel.
+
+Much of the physical trouble comes from filling up the boiler too much.
+
+Cut down the food and you will feel better.
+
+
+
+
+38.
+
+
+Anger and revenge are great pull-backs to health.
+
+Anger makes the blood rush to the head, weakens the body, and distorts
+the vision.
+
+When a woman gets angry, she quarrels with her lover, her husband or her
+children. Any one of these things is a calamity.
+
+When a man gets angry, he is a wild man. His eyes glitter, his mouth is
+cruel, his fists clinch, his body trembles, his blood veins strain, and
+he does more harm to his system in five minutes of anger than nature can
+repair in a day.
+
+[Sidenote: Anger and Poise.]
+
+Anger makes weak stomachs, dizzy heads, poor judgment, lost friends,
+despair and sickness, and if the habit becomes confirmed, will likely
+lead to apoplexy. When two men have differences, watch the cool man
+finish victor; the angry man always loses. Keep your head; let the other
+fellow fret and fume.
+
+He will tie himself up in a knot, and when the gong is rung, he will be
+the loser.
+
+Serenity is one of God's blessings. Fortunate is the man who can hold
+his serenity.
+
+When you get a letter that stirs you to anger, don't answer that letter
+for forty-eight hours, then write a moderately vitriolic letter--and
+then tear it up.
+
+[Sidenote: The Futility of Revenge.]
+
+I know you are tempted and goaded, and your limit of endurance is
+sometimes reached. But I know that revenge is sweet only in
+anticipation. I know that revenge by anger and by the cruel "eye for an
+eye" measure is never, never sweet.
+
+I have been the victim of imposition, ingratitude and insincerity, and
+advantage has been taken of me because I kept my poise and serenity.
+
+I have been called easy, and soft, and friends have shown me where I was
+imposed upon, but I was stooping to conquer. I kept my reserve, my
+resistance, and my power ready until time, place, and preparedness let
+me spring my coup, and then I cashed in beautifully in principal and
+interest for those acts and hurts.
+
+I have power now in my hands to make others suffer keenly and deeply for
+wrongs they have done me. Yet I do not exercise that power to revenge.
+
+I have been misjudged and misunderstood, because cowardly persons have
+lied and villified me, and have accused me of motives and acts of which
+I was innocent.
+
+I am well hated now by one person in particular, who blames me for
+things another is guilty of. A word from me would clear myself, but it
+would bring gloom and despair to that person and would not make me any
+more cognizant of my innocence.
+
+[Sidenote: Time, the Arbiter.]
+
+Time somehow will bring out the truth; the cowardly, guilty individual
+who basks in the favor of the one who is angry at me will surely pay for
+his wrong. This I know, and I am satisfied with the ultimate result.
+
+My former friend, who is angry at me, would simply switch the anger
+current to the guilty one if I told the facts; the guilty person
+couldn't stand that anger like I can. My act would break up a home and
+bring misery. The satisfaction I would receive would not equal the
+sorrow my act would cause to others.
+
+I am far removed from the location where these people live, and I can
+stand the anger of the one who puts the blame on me by accepting the
+lies of another as truth.
+
+I have the documents in black and white, yet I don't use them because I
+have poise and the consciousness of knowing I am right, and those who
+are dear to me know it, too.
+
+I've tried both plans, the plan of anger and the plan of poise, and I
+like poise better.
+
+I believe I hear more birds, I believe I get more pleasure out of life
+and living than the man who gets angry and loves revenge.
+
+Anyway, I think so, and "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
+
+
+
+
+39.
+
+
+Sleeping, like breathing and digesting, is controlled by the
+subconscious brain centers. Natural sleep requires no positive mental
+impulse; it's just relaxing, and nature takes care of the process.
+
+[Sidenote: Can't Sleep.]
+
+That is natural sleep, but when you start your dry cell battery, the
+brain, and commence to worry and fear, you are going to stay awake. Then
+the conscious mind dominates the subconscious mind, and you banish the
+very comforter you seek to woo.
+
+Business men who work under high tension all day on business matters,
+and high tension all evening in threshing over again the business of the
+day, are almost sure to suffer from insomnia.
+
+The continuance of this habit of thinking of business day and night
+brings on the insomnia habit and that, in turn, gives rise to the
+delusion that you are fighting for your natural sleep. This produces
+worry, the demon that kills and maims.
+
+To have an occasional wakeful night is natural; it is an evidence of
+intelligence: the mental dullard never has wakeful nights.
+
+Unless the fear of sleeplessness becomes a full grown phobia, no anxiety
+need be felt. The fear of insomnia, the over-anxiety to go to sleep, is
+to be more dreaded than insomnia itself.
+
+[Sidenote: To Get Results.]
+
+To get refreshing sleep you must put yourself in a state of actual
+physical tiredness. Take exercise. Walk in one direction until the first
+symptoms of becoming tired appear, then walk home. Take a hot bath, then
+sponge with cold or cool water. Put a cold cloth at the head, and rub
+the backbone with cold water.
+
+Open your windows wide, then relax. Don't worry; you are going to sleep.
+
+Lie on your back, open your eyes wide, look up as if you were trying to
+see your eyebrows, hold your eyes open this way ten to twenty seconds,
+then close them slowly. Repeat this several times.
+
+Sleep will have descended on you before you realize it.
+
+Or occupy your mind with auto-suggestions like this: "I am going to
+sleep--sound, heavy, restful, peaceful sleep. My eyelids are getting
+heavy--heavy. I am going to close them and go to sleep."
+
+Don't try to count imaginary sheep jumping over fence rails. Don't
+count numbers. It is a bad habit.
+
+If these suggestions do not help you the first night, say: "All right,
+my brain was too active; to-morrow I will let down a bit."
+
+Next night eat one or two dry crackers; chew them slowly, masticate them
+thoroughly until you can swallow easily.
+
+This little food will draw the blood pressure from the brain and help
+you to go to sleep.
+
+Drive out business and worry thoughts. Think faith and courage
+thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+40.
+
+
+To live down the past and erase the errors, live the present boldly.
+
+Do not chastise or condemn yourself for mistakes you have made. You are
+not alone; everyone has made missteps--has hurt others or wronged
+himself.
+
+[Sidenote: Making Mistakes.]
+
+Everyone has had reverses and met trouble and misfortune. It's the plan
+of things. It is by undergoing trials like these that we gain in
+experience and wisdom. We are enabled to correct our future acts by
+utilizing the lessons which our mistakes have taught us.
+
+Yesterday is dead; forget it. Face about. Live to-day; be busy, be
+active, be intent on doing right and accomplishing things worth while.
+
+The world's memory is short. A misdeed, an error, a wrongful act on your
+part may set busy tongues wagging to-day, and you may suffer from
+calumny and criticism. Of course, your errors will be magnified and your
+wrongs enlarged beyond the truth; that's the penalty you pay for your
+transgressions.
+
+Lies are always added to truth in telling of one's misdeeds. Be brave.
+Weather the storm; it will soon blow over. To-morrow the world will
+forget.
+
+You've suffered in your own conscience; that's all the debt you can pay
+on the old score.
+
+[Sidenote: Worrying Won't Help.]
+
+Now, then, get busy with the glorious opportunity that today presents.
+Don't make the same mistake again. There are no eyes in the back of your
+head; look forward. Don't worry by envying the other fellow and
+comparing his good deeds with your mistakes; you only see his good. He
+has had troubles and made mistakes, too, but you and the world have
+forgotten them.
+
+If every man's sins were printed on his forehead, the crowds that pass
+by would all wear their hats over their eyes.
+
+I'm trying to comfort you, and slap you on the back, and tell you that
+you are just human, and all humans make false steps.
+
+The patriarchs in the Bible made mistakes, but they got in the fold.
+History has perpetuated their names. Their lives, on the whole, were
+worth while. It's the sum total of acts that count.
+
+
+
+
+41.
+
+
+[Sidenote: To-day and To-morrow.]
+
+One man says the present is everything, that eternity is nothing. The
+other man says eternity is everything, that the present is nothing. I
+believe the real truth is that both are man's chief concern, and neither
+view comprehends all truth. In this matter, the general rule I have so
+often pointed out will harmoniously apply. That rule is: Avoid extremes.
+
+Those who believe that the Now, the Present, is the all-important thing
+in man's life have the fashionable or favorite point of view.
+
+Man has much definite information about the present, he knows much about
+life. He is in the midst of life--it pulsates all around him and in him.
+
+We know positively that the law of compensation is inexorable in its
+demand for right and positive in its punishment of wrong.
+
+We know that on this earth kindness, love, occupation, help, truth,
+honor and sympathy are investments which bring happiness to-day. You
+get your pay instantly when you have done a helpful act, and you get
+your punishment instantly when you have done a hurtful act.
+
+[Sidenote: The Hereafter.]
+
+That there is a future most of us agree, because good sense and logic
+point to that sane and reasonable conclusion. So be it. With a belief in
+the future estate, it is reasonable to assume that our acts and lives in
+the present will have influence on our future estate.
+
+We know positively of to-day; we know the happiness we can get from good
+deeds done to-day. We come to this knowledge by experience.
+
+If we will have power in the future to look back on to-day's acts, well
+and good if to-day's acts are worth while.
+
+The other view, that Eternity is everything and the present is nothing,
+is the antiquated view, the narrow view--the, I might say, illiterate
+view.
+
+That view warps the present life; it calls for present
+self-chastisement, present gloom, present sorrow and present misery.
+
+It takes the tangible definite to-day, calls it nothing, and accepts the
+intangible unknown eternity as everything.
+
+[Sidenote: A Cheerless Philosophy.]
+
+It trades the definite for the indefinite. It calls life a bubble, a
+vapor, a shadow. In fact, it throws a pall over to-day's sunshine, and
+regards our earthly life as a sort of purgatory--a dismal unhappy
+punishment ante-chamber where man exists and waits, peeping out of his
+cell windows for a little imagined view of eternity.
+
+He waits and endures the unpleasant interval, steeled against the
+definite pleasures of to-day, his whole outlook colored by a fanatical
+and intoxicated belief in the expected happiness of the undefined
+future.
+
+He refuses to think of the definite life of to-day that we all know, and
+spoils the thought of those who do.
+
+He is a blockade to progress, a disagreeable part of life's picture.
+
+He gets no happiness in the to-day which is in his hands; he loses his
+opportunity to be of service here, and lives in the hope of a vague and
+nebulous future state which has no connection with the realities of
+every-day life.
+
+Both theories as ultimate beliefs are wrong, yet each has some truth in
+its conclusion.
+
+By taking the words "Eternity" and "Present" and saying that both mean
+everything, we avoid extremes and form a truth that is rational, and
+harmonious to good reason.
+
+The man who says that the present is all, does so because he is an
+utilitarian. He reasons from the definite and the seeable, and refuses
+to believe in the abstract. Anything that is outside the sphere of his
+vision and action is of little concern to him.
+
+The man who says eternity is all, wastes a golden opportunity and warps
+himself into a miserable hermit.
+
+Life is irrevocable. Every act in our life is placed, set, and fixed.
+
+Every act goes in the record book of yesterday, and it cannot be
+changed.
+
+Acts that hurt others will rebound and hurt us. Deeds that help others
+will rebound and help us. This much is certain.
+
+There is a future, I believe that. There is a God, I believe that.
+
+Just what the future is, and just what God is, I do not know in perfect
+detail.
+
+Reward for good and punishment for evil is part of God's plan, and I am
+conscious of this truth.
+
+I know that justice prevails in this life, and this life is what I am
+living now.
+
+[Sidenote: The Good That Lies at Hand.]
+
+If I live and act to-day in accordance with what I sincerely believe is
+in tune with God's purpose, I shall, in my future estate, benefit by
+those acts. If I live and act to-day in disregard of all around me,
+selfishly catering to my personal desires and believing that eternity is
+everything and the present nothing, I am neglecting the opportunity to
+do good now in the hope of a future personal reward, the very nature of
+which is unknowable. I shall therefore strive to do, and to be,
+right--to be kind, helpful, cheery and smiling now, for the reward such
+acts bring now.
+
+And I shall doubtless have as good a record and passport to the future
+as the man who suffers now and lives only upon his selfish hope of the
+future.
+
+His is the faith of fear, mine the faith of reason in the all-wise,
+all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing Ruler of the universe, who gave me
+my life, my brain, my reason, which I am trying to use, as well as my
+limitations will permit, in helping myself and helping others to smile,
+to be happy, to be serene, to be confident, to be competent, to be
+useful.
+
+Everything lives and dies in accordance with the plan of the Creator of
+the Universe, and you are an atom and I am an atom in that Universe,
+which is governed by a power too big and too great for us to
+comprehend.
+
+Verily we presume when we say: "We have all the truth; think as we do or
+you are lost."
+
+The old world has not told its full story. The Universe of which this
+world is a part is still a deep, unfathomable mystery.
+
+We shall not know all truth until the great revealing time.
+
+[Sidenote: The Use of To-day.]
+
+We cannot change the pages of the millions of years gone by. We can do
+every little to change the pages of the millions of years to come. What
+little we can do, we can only do TO-DAY. To-day is yours and mine; let's
+do the best we can with our possession in act and thought and word.
+
+The sun goes down behind the sky-line on the West as it has done for
+millions of years. I lay aside my pen with a bigger view, a deeper
+appreciation of the Creator, and a profounder faith in His wisdom and
+works than ever.
+
+God made. God rules. God plans. And verily, we are weaklings and foolish
+who presume by selfish prayer to suggest to Him what He shall do.
+
+Let us strive to be appreciative of Him; let us try to lift ourselves to
+the sublime plane of realizing that we are part of Him and His plan, and
+that failure is impossible to us, if we keep up and on, doing good,
+speaking softly, dealing gently, showing kindness to-day, and living in
+accordance with the big, broad, generous, charitable plan instead of in
+the little, bigoted, narrow, selfish, conceited idea that we are sole
+possessors of truth and that the man who differs with us in belief is in
+error.
+
+This chapter is about big things, and in it is a big moral for all who
+are big enough to grasp it.
+
+
+
+
+42.
+
+
+"I believe in him because he is so sincere."
+
+[Sidenote: Sincerity and Truth.]
+
+You've heard that, haven't you? I never could understand how a sensible
+person could use such logic. Sincerity is no evidence of truth. The
+Hindu mother is sincere when she throws her babe to the crocodiles, but
+her sincerity is no proof that by this sacrifice she is sure of her
+salvation.
+
+The Christian Scientist is sincere in the belief that medicines do not
+cure diseases. The doctor is equally sincere in his belief that
+medicines do cure disease.
+
+The Theosophist is sincere, the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Christian,
+the Pagan, the Mohammedan, the Buddhist, the Sunworshipper, the
+Republican, the Democrat, the Progressive, the Prohibitionist, the
+Brewer, all these are sincere in their beliefs. And as these beliefs are
+different, it is common sense to say that no one creed, sect, belief,
+branch, dogma or system includes or embodies all truth.
+
+[Sidenote: No Monopoly on Truth.]
+
+It is true that every channel or avenue we meet in life's travel has
+some truth, but it is not for you or me to assume that we are the sole
+possessors of wisdom and the real discoverers of all truth. We must not
+take the conclusions we arrive at and expect to force the world to
+accept without protest our rules for conduct, our methods for living,
+our practices for morals, or our beliefs for their guidance.
+
+Converts to new doctrines, new issues, new cults, and to the old ones,
+too, are made largely because the ambassadors or proselyters seem so
+fervid and sincere in expounding what they claim is the definite truth.
+
+The believers in a cult or code of ethics are auto-hypnotized; their
+visions are narrowed.
+
+By focusing their thought on their special belief, they bring together
+sophistry, argument, example and so-called proof that gives them
+facility in arguing the case or expounding their doctrine.
+
+[Sidenote: Christian Science.]
+
+You can make no gain in trying to argue with a Christian Scientist. You
+ask for concrete rules, definite answers and proofs other than their
+flat statements, and you are told you have not the understanding--you do
+not view the subject from the right plane, and that the truth cannot be
+shown you. You are told to have faith and belief, to eliminate
+antagonism, and to study "Science and Health," and you will receive the
+divine spirit and see the light.
+
+The Scientist is sincere; he shows you "Science and Health" with a lot
+of testimonials in the back to prove that Christian Science cures
+disease. Every patent medicine, every science, every system of healing
+has testimonials by the hundreds.
+
+Scientists say there is no disease, no material--that we are only spirit
+or soul or thought--that we are not matter but mind. Health, they tell
+us, is truth and disease is error. They deny disease, yet "Science and
+Health" and the midweek experience meetings have testimonials of disease
+cured by Christian Science.
+
+There is much truth in Christian Science. People are helped by it;
+people are sincere in their belief in it, but that Christian Science is
+all truth, all-powerful, all-right, all-sufficient, cannot be proven.
+
+What about the people who have gone hence before Christian Science was
+ever heard of?
+
+The theological religion of to-day differs radically in practice and
+belief from what it was fifty years ago.
+
+If the Protestant religion be all truth, what became of our religious
+ancestors who died before Martin Luther found the truth?
+
+[Sidenote: The Spirit of Tolerance.]
+
+I have no quarrel with the Christian Scientist, the Protestant, the
+Roman Catholic, the Buddhist or the Mohammedan. I must be generous and
+broad enough to admit that others have the right to think and be
+sincere. All sciences have truth, but no science, sect, cult, dogma or
+creed is ALL truth.
+
+Sincerity is evidence of honest conviction, but that your sincerity in
+your belief must be accepted by me as proof that I should believe as you
+do, is, I believe, the place where I have the undoubted right to say: "I
+reserve the right to my own conclusions, and I would be unjust to myself
+if I should force myself to accept your viewpoint without fully
+satisfying myself that you were right."
+
+So, because a person is sincere in a conviction that is contrary to your
+conscientious belief, do not be disturbed. There is no need to swerve
+from your own common sense analysis of the matter, or be convinced
+against your better judgment.
+
+No one possesses all the truth. It is for you and me to do our plain
+duty as we see it--to do the best we can each day in act and thought and
+word.
+
+We can pretty much agree on the simple essential truths which are
+proven. That is--being honest, truthful, kind, lovable, sympathetic,
+cheerful; doing good, helping one another, and doing things worth while.
+
+[Sidenote: Unprofitable Speculation.]
+
+If we agree on these things, and do useful work, and think helpful
+thoughts, we are doing our duty. Theories, arguments and studying too
+deeply on bootless systems, codes, beliefs, cults, isms and doctrines,
+is a waste of time. When we can, here and now, derive definite benefits
+from doing the simple and helpful things, and acting and thinking the
+simple, practical cheer thoughts, it is neither necessary nor helpful
+for us to waste time on spiritualism or theoretical beliefs that cannot
+be proven to our own satisfaction.
+
+We are asked to believe these strange, impractical, unnatural beliefs
+because of the sincerity of others. It's better to believe and to credit
+the things we can ourselves measure, understand and sincerely adopt.
+
+There are hundreds of strange beliefs and spiritual systems, each
+claiming to be all-powerful, all-right. If any one is all truth, then
+all the others are all wrong.
+
+The bigot who assumes he is the sole possessor of truth--the cult,
+sect, ism, or science that claims to possess all truth and presumes to
+lay down the exact rules for the world to obey--should be classed with
+those misguided religions and institutions of the dark past which burned
+human beings who dared to doubt their claim to the possession of all
+truth and knowledge.
+
+God never gave his approval to any one man-made religious sect.
+
+God is the universal good power. Man often tries to dwarf God's idea to
+the narrow dimensions of his own small soul.
+
+
+
+
+43.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Whiskey and Fake Medicines.]
+
+Whiskey must go. It is written on the pages of the record book of man's
+progress. Likewise must the quack doctor and the fake medicine go. They
+have had their day. The quack doctor has already breathed his last in
+many parts of the country. The fake medicine schemes are still with us,
+but they are becoming increasingly difficult to put over. That they are
+doomed to extinction, there can be no doubt.
+
+The side-whiskered advertising doctor who magnifies symptoms and
+proclaims them to be grave forerunners of awful, debilitating disease,
+is nothing short of a criminal. He is one of the worst of criminals,
+because he imposes upon the credulity of the ignorant, excites their
+fear by means of sensational scarehead advertising, and then when he has
+finally lured them into his spider-web, fleeces them unmercifully. These
+charlatans are really more contemptible than any thief, for the thief
+does not pretend to be anything else but what he is, while the quack
+doctor swindles and exploits you under the guise of being your
+benefactor.
+
+As I have repeatedly explained, illness, feeling "out of sorts," local
+pains and sickness, unless of the contagious or infectious kind, are
+largely conditions of the mind.
+
+Most of the temporary ailments are caused by constipation, wrong diet or
+lack of exercise. The doctor gives a laxative, nature re-asserts
+herself, and the patient is cured.
+
+Chronic ailments require long treatments--making long bills and many
+visits for the quack doctor.
+
+[Sidenote: Your Family Physician.]
+
+Your health and happiness are things largely in your own control.
+However, when you feel you must have a doctor, go to your family
+physician and not to a strange doctor who advertises. His advertisement
+is merely a spiderweb to catch and hold you while he robs you.
+
+It is a hopeful sign of the brighter future toward which man is
+progressing, that the respectable papers will not lend their aid to
+swindling doctors. The best papers will not carry these quack doctor or
+fake medicine ads.
+
+Before long the government will pass laws abolishing this baneful,
+shameful, quack advertising. Quack doctoring, gambling, liquor
+selling--these are all swindling methods to get money, and in the
+getting, the ghouls and parasites who practise these "professions" are
+killing men, ruining homes, destroying happiness, holding back progress.
+
+The one object of the quack doctor is to size you up and see what you
+"are good for." "Good for" means how much money can he get from you, and
+how long can he keep you as a patient to contribute to his coffers.
+
+Let every reader of this book enroll as an opponent to quack doctors and
+quack medicines, and by word and influence help to hasten the day when
+such pernicious swindlers and swindling schemes are things of the past.
+
+
+
+
+44.
+
+
+No two minds can see the same picture in the same way, nor can two
+persons, armed and equipped with logic, come to the same definite
+conclusions on religion.
+
+The old Scripture said: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
+The new Scripture teaches us to "turn the other cheek" and "love our
+enemies."
+
+[Sidenote: Religion, Old and New.]
+
+Two hundred years ago witchcraft was practised and miserable human
+beings were burned at the stake. Thirty years ago the preacher who took
+exception to the universal belief of a hell of fire and brimstone was
+thrown out of the church. To-day no preacher believes in such a hell.
+
+Present day religion is really a Sunday religion. One and a half hours a
+week the members of the church join in singing, "We shall know each
+other there." The remainder of the week they make it a point to keep
+from knowing each other here.
+
+[Sidenote: Sectarianism.]
+
+The Protestant church divides itself into numerous sects, each one
+built on some particular ordinance or practice. Each one, in matters of
+doctrine, will swallow a camel but will strain at a gnat. One sect
+insists that baptism shall be by immersion because the disciples
+baptized that way. They believe in following custom literally, yet in
+the cities they immerse the members in a big tub under the pulpit, which
+practice is entirely different from the method employed by John the
+Baptist.
+
+Another sect insists upon having a communion every Sunday because the
+Bible says, "As often as you do this," etc. To be literal in the matter
+of communion, the Lord's Supper should be served at night, as the
+original was, and it should be supper and not a few pieces of broken
+crackers.
+
+The sect that insists on following the Scriptures in the matter of
+baptism by immersion fails to follow the Scriptures in the matter of
+washing the feet or anointing the head.
+
+Many years ago, churches considered it a sacrilege to use an organ.
+To-day they have orchestras and hire operatic singers.
+
+So it seems that the church is broadening out. Thinking men refuse to
+believe that religion should any longer be a matter of self-chastisement
+and worry, sobs and misery. Because so much of this sort of teaching is
+prevalent, the church is not making the gains it should. The church is
+largely supported by nice little women--many of them maiden ladies who
+have little to do and know little of the great problems of the busy
+world.
+
+[Sidenote: A Live Religion.]
+
+I am thoroughly convinced that the church must recognize that a great
+evolution is taking place--that we must be more charitable, more broad
+in our views, less technical in our tenets and more practical in our
+work. We will have to cut down the fences between the sects and get
+together in the great field for a common cause, rather than try to
+maintain little independent vineyards.
+
+Religion must teach smiles and joy, courage and brotherly love, instead
+of frowns, dejection, fear and worry.
+
+It must teach us how to be and how to get good out of our to-day on
+earth. If we are good and do good here, we certainly need have no fear
+for our future prospects.
+
+[Sidenote: The Universal Church.]
+
+Day by day we are progressing from narrowness, bigotry, selfishness and
+envy, to broadness, reason, brotherly love and contentment, and we shall
+progress from the narrow confines of obstinate orthodoxy or
+bulldogmatics, by breaking down sect and cult barriers until we are
+joined together in a universal church in which all can put their hearts
+and beliefs--in which all can find full range for their spiritual belief
+and expression. That big, broad, right church will be in harmony with
+God's purpose.
+
+The Creator made all men, and He doesn't confine His love or His
+interest to any one little man-made, narrow sect or creed.
+
+"God is love." "Love thy neighbor." "Help the weak; cheer the grief
+stricken." Those are the commands and purposes we find everywhere in the
+Scriptures.
+
+"He that believeth in me shall be saved." That's a definite promise, and
+it is not qualified by a lot of creed paragraphs and beliefs. That
+promise doesn't have any "buts" or "ifs." It doesn't say we shall be
+saved if we be Methodists or Catholics, Baptists or Presbyterians. Those
+names are man-made, and the creeds of those churches are man-made, too.
+
+At the congress of religions in the World's Fair at Chicago, over three
+hundred religions and sects were represented by delegates from all over
+the world, and every one of these delegates, with hearty accord, sang,
+"Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow" and "Rock of Ages." Those
+hymns were universal; they fitted all creeds and sects.
+
+Big men in the church are intensely interested in the get-together
+universal church, and each year will mark a definite progress toward
+amalgamation of sects and divisions.
+
+There should be no Methodist Church North and Methodist Church South.
+
+There should not be churches like the Congregational and Presbyterian,
+whose creeds are identical, the difference being only in the officers.
+
+The country village of 1,000 population has five churches; it should
+have only one. The country is full of half-starved preachers and weak,
+struggling congregations.
+
+The get-together movement will help religion, and it's going to happen
+surely.
+
+
+
+
+45.
+
+
+Every year the business man goes over his stock, tools, fixtures, and
+accounts, and prepares a statement of assets and liabilities so as to
+get a fairly accurate understanding of his profit and loss.
+
+If he didn't take this inventory, his net worth would be a matter of
+guess work.
+
+This inventory, which deals with money, materials, etc., and things
+which are mixed more or less with the human element, is affected by
+conditions of trade, crops, competition, supply and demand.
+
+The business man takes all these conditions into consideration in
+preparing for the coming year. He red flags the mistakes and green flags
+the good plans.
+
+[Sidenote: Self Inventory. Listing the Liabilities.]
+
+The business man should carry the inventory further. Every month or so
+he should take a careful inventory of himself, putting down his assets
+of health, initiative, patience, ability to work, smiles, honesty,
+sincerity, and the like. So also he should put down on the debit side
+in the list of liabilities the pull-backs, hindrances and other
+business-killers. These items are untruth, unfairness, sharp practice,
+grouchiness, impatience, worry, ill-health, gloom, meanness, broken
+word, unfilled promises and the like.
+
+In making up the inventory, pay particular attention to your habits:
+smoking, drinking, over-eating, useless display, useless social
+functions, and other useless things that pull on your nerves and your
+pocket book.
+
+Then check up department A, which is your family. How have you dealt
+with your family and children?
+
+Department B is friends. How do you stand in your treatment of them?
+
+Department C includes all other persons. Did you lie to, steal from,
+cheat or defraud any one? How much cash profit did you make? How much
+less a man did the act make you?
+
+Go over your self-respect account. Does it show profit or loss?
+
+Check up your employees' account. What has your stewardship shown? Have
+you drawn the employees closer, or have you driven them further from
+you?
+
+Analyze your spiritual account. Is your religious belief a sham or a
+conviction? Do you sing on Sunday, "We shall know each other there," or
+do you make it a point to know and love your brother here, seven days a
+week?
+
+[Sidenote: Balancing the Statement.]
+
+Be fair in your inventory. Write down the facts in the two columns
+designated "good" and "bad," then go over the list and put a red danger
+flag on the bad. Keep the list until next inventory and see whether you
+have made a gain or loss in your net moral standing.
+
+Don't read this and say, "A good idea." Do the thing literally.
+
+Take a clean sheet of paper and write your personal assets and
+liabilities down in the two columns marked "good" and "bad."
+
+If this inventory doesn't help, then you may call me a false prophet.
+
+I know the plan is a good one. I know it will help you. If it helps you,
+you will thank me. There can be no harm in trying, because it's a
+worth-while thing to test.
+
+The business man who never takes inventory is likely to bump some day.
+
+
+
+
+46.
+
+
+The ego is in us. It is a good thing to have, but egotism needs the soft
+pedal when we speak or do things.
+
+Many people are unconscious of their egotism, yet their conversation
+carries the suggestion, "Even I, who am superior to the herd, would do
+this or that."
+
+[Sidenote: The Personal Pronoun.]
+
+For instance, two persons were arguing about the merits of an
+inexpensive automobile. Parenthetically, I may say that one belonged to
+the Ford class, and the other to the can't-afford class. A can't-afford
+snob came to the rescue of the Ford champion by saying, "That's a good
+car; why, I wouldn't mind owning one of them myself," and he beamed at
+the party with the consciousness of having settled the matter and
+removed the stigma from the Ford car.
+
+This egotism often crops out when one shows a group picture in which he
+appears. He doesn't wait for you to find him; he pokes his arm over your
+shoulder and says, "That's me."
+
+To each of us, in the very nature of things, the "I" is the center of
+our world. We see things always through our I's.
+
+If we wish to get along without friction, we must remember that the
+other fellow has his I's also, and when we try to make him see things
+through out I's, it makes trouble.
+
+[Sidenote: Good Breeding.]
+
+The hall mark of education, refinement and character, in the broad
+sense, is the ability to exclude the personal so far as possible from
+our conversation. And be big enough to grant to others their undoubted
+right to see and think from their own standpoint.
+
+Argument develops egotism more than almost anything else will.
+
+How often have you convinced another in an argument?
+
+How often have you been convinced in an argument?
+
+The world is big; there are millions of others in it, and our job is a
+big one if we 'tend pretty well to our own knittin'.
+
+
+
+
+47.
+
+
+Four hundred and twenty-six years ago Christopher Columbus landed on an
+island which he thought was India.
+
+Chris was mighty happy as he put his foot on good old Mother Earth, not
+so much because he had discovered a new way to India, as he thought, but
+because his foot touched land.
+
+Two days before he landed on San Salvador, his crew pitched into him and
+threatened to throw him in the sea and turn back with the ship to Spain.
+
+[Sidenote: The Last Step Counts.]
+
+If Chris had shown the white feather, 1492 would not be the date of the
+first line in the geography, announcing the "Discovery of America."
+Chris had perseverance--the stuff that makes men successful. He started
+to find India by sailing westward. He didn't succeed in his purpose, but
+his determination was rewarded just the same, for he found a new
+country, and that was worth while.
+
+Before he started, he was promised ten per cent of the revenue from any
+lands he might discover. Just imagine what that would mean to-day.
+
+Columbus had perseverance and pep, and his unwavering fidelity to his
+cause brought him success in his efforts.
+
+The world has improved since 1492, but the percentage of men who would
+keep everlastingly at it like Columbus did, has not increased, perhaps.
+
+Columbus sailed with three ships, the largest sixty-six feet long. He
+steered in the direction of the setting sun. His crew was 120 men. None
+of them were enthusiastic at the start; all of them disgusted,
+discouraged and ready to mutiny toward the last.
+
+[Sidenote: Keeping Everlastingly at It.]
+
+But Christopher kept the ships pointed West, through rain and shine,
+through drifting, breezeless days and through wild stormy nights. He
+kept on and on and on, and he brought home the bacon, which, being
+interpreted, means that success crowned his efforts.
+
+Perseverance and pep--when all is said and done, these are the factors
+without which no great achievement is possible.
+
+It was the mileage made on October 12th, 1492, that counted.
+
+It is the last step in a race that counts.
+
+It is the last stroke on the nail that counts.
+
+The moral is that many a prize has been lost just when it was ready to
+be plucked.
+
+Perseverance--patience--pluck--pep--these are magic words. They are the
+"Open Sesame" of modern life. They open the door to opportunity, and
+will bring you prosperity, peace and plenty.
+
+
+
+
+48.
+
+
+The man who ridicules everything is on the toboggan slide, and he will
+end up by becoming an out-and-out grouch.
+
+You and I know men who never have a pleasant word to say of anyone, or a
+serious commendation of anything.
+
+[Sidenote: Ridicule and Humor.]
+
+Ridicule and sarcasm are often coated with would-be humor, and are
+sometimes decked out as puns. By and by, however, this bias toward
+ridicule and sarcasm gets to be a habit, and the coat of humor becomes
+threadbare.
+
+Just at this time friends depart, for the grouch phase of the disease
+has started.
+
+Sarcasm and ridicule are powerful weapons when used adroitly and for
+good purposes. But when sarcasm and ridicule are used constantly as a
+means to generate fun, or as vehicles for humor, then the evil
+commences. The fun disappears; the sting remains.
+
+People will listen to you for awhile if you good-naturedly ridicule a
+thing, but when you are known to have the habit, that is when friends
+give you the go-by.
+
+Sarcasm and ridicule wound deeply; they are hot pokers jabbed in
+quivering flesh.
+
+[Sidenote: A Dangerous Weapon.]
+
+Don't juggle with ridicule or sarcasm, for people look beneath the
+veneer nowadays. They remember and repeat the axiom, "There's many a
+true word spoken in jest." There are so many beautiful things to say, so
+many kind expressions to utter, so many helpful hints to give, that we
+should be ashamed to say or do things even jokingly that may hurt
+another.
+
+When you ridicule a thing or a person, you may ridicule the tender heart
+of one you should cheer and help.
+
+Ridicule is the negative approach to a subject anyway; the only good it
+can accomplish is by reflex action or rebound force.
+
+Ridicule is mistakenly conceived, by many, as humor. It is used because
+it can so easily be employed, in a seemingly clever way, to create a
+laugh.
+
+Humor of the clean sort is a rare gift. Humor may easily descend to low
+comedy through the use of ridicule, and often the audience does not
+differentiate between low comedy and rare humor.
+
+The masses will laugh when the comedian on the stage hits his friend
+with a club; that sort of fun-making satisfies adults who have
+children's brains, and people of similar brain-construction will also
+laugh at jokes which ride on ridicule. But you who read these lines are
+worthy of better things; that's why you are reading this book. If, in my
+audience, there are those who have the ridicule habit, I want to arouse
+you to a better sense of humor than is possible through the employment
+of ridicule and sarcasm.
+
+I don't want you to descend to the level of the grouch. The slide-down
+is so easy; the climbing back is so very hard.
+
+Ridicule and sarcasm are cheap, slap-stick methods to produce fun. They
+leave a sting many times when you are not aware of it.
+
+[Sidenote: When You Can Go the Limit.]
+
+When fighting whiskey, sin, corruption or organized evil, then use
+burning ridicule and caustic sarcasm to sizzle and destroy the things
+that need to be destroyed. Next time you find yourself using ridicule or
+sarcasm to provoke mirth, remember you are toying with a habit-forming
+practice that is likely to get the best of you unless you stop and stop
+now.
+
+
+
+
+49.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Your Wife and Partner.]
+
+A wife is either a partner or an employee. If a partner, she has a
+right to the fifty-fifty split on profits; if an employee, she is
+entitled to her wages. A thrifty husband is commendable, but a
+show-me-what-you-did-with-that-money husband should be punished by
+being sentenced to attend pink teas, afternoon receptions, and to
+match samples at the dry goods store.
+
+Married folks must be on a partnership basis, or there's sand in the
+gear box.
+
+Give the wife the check-book; let her pay the bills. Play fair with her;
+show her what your income is; give her all you can afford and what
+economic and wise administration warrants. She'll cut the cloth to fit
+the garment.
+
+When the husband questions every turn, every move, and doles out every
+cent, the wife feels like a prisoner or a slave. Wives will do good team
+work when they are broken to double harness with their husbands.
+
+Women are generally raised without being required to economize. They
+have probably been petted and humored, and are used to preening and
+smoothing their plumage and looking pretty.
+
+[Sidenote: Fine Feathers.]
+
+It's the female instinct in the human. In the animal world, the male has
+the plumage and does the strutting and fascinating; but in the human
+animal, the female is the bird with the bright plumage.
+
+You can't expect her to know much about the economic side of the home
+the moment you slip the ring on her finger.
+
+But she'll shop better than her husband if he takes an interest in her
+shopping and encourages her in the economical administration of the
+household budget.
+
+She wants a word of appreciation once in a while. She chills under the
+surveillance and parsimony of an eagle-eyed, meddlesome husband.
+
+She's a sweet bird, and sweet birds and hawks don't nest well together.
+
+Where the hawk and the dove are in the same cage, the feathers will fly.
+
+As I came through the park this morning, I saw a pair of robins who had
+the right idea. They shared home responsibilities and did fine team
+work. I think they were mighty happy, too; daddy red breast looked
+mighty proud as he hustled worms for the family breakfast.
+
+Mama Robin looked down with loving eyes at her hubby, and the little
+baby robins sang a chorus of joy at the very privilege of living in such
+a home.
+
+Worry will fly out of the window the moment the husband and wife lay
+their cards on the table and play the open hand. The moment one or the
+other keeps a few cards up their sleeve, then worry and trouble come
+back.
+
+The moral of this is, husbands and wives: live together, get together,
+stay together, play together, save together, grow together, share
+together. Travel the same road; don't take different paths.
+
+
+
+
+50.
+
+
+To-night I am in the Ozarks, and old Mother Earth is passing through the
+belt of meteoric dust--that great mysterious sea in the universe through
+which we pass every year about the middle of November.
+
+[Sidenote: The Stars.]
+
+I look out into the night and marvel at the countless stars in the
+infinite black void, and wonder how closely those stars may be connected
+with humanity. That they are connected, I have no doubt, for truly, "the
+sun, the moon, the stars, and endless space as well, are parts, are
+things, like me, that cometh from and runneth by one grand power of
+which I am in truth a part, an atom though I be."
+
+How many stars are there? Well, let's get ready to appreciate number. I
+can see about 3,000; with opera glasses I could see 30,000.
+
+Franklin Adams some years ago photographed the whole canopy with 206
+exposures. He counted the stars by mathematical plans, and published his
+finding that there were 1,600,000,000 stars. That number is just about
+the number of humans on this earth. So, then, there is one star for each
+of us.
+
+[Sidenote: Finite and Infinite.]
+
+Each of those stars, practically speaking, is larger than the earth. It
+is thought that many of them may have human beings who think and reason
+like we do. Multiply the 1,600,000,000 population on this earth by any
+portion of the 1,600,000,000 stars that may have thinking creatures on
+them; multiply that total by the millions of years and millions of
+generations that have passed out of existence.
+
+Think of these numbers and limitless boundaries, and then tell me, if
+you can, that one little man on one little star we call Earth has a
+strangle-hold on truth, and that his viewpoint, his ism, his little
+dogma, his narrow creed, is all-sufficient, all-right, all-inclusive.
+
+Verily, little protoplasm, you have another guess. We can, by experience
+and tests, prove two and two make four. We can by practice and
+experience prove that love, kindness, help, gentleness, sympathy, cheer
+and courage bring happiness.
+
+[Sidenote: The Sense of Proportion.]
+
+These are tangible things that fall within the province of human
+experience. But when one wee Willie with sober face tells you and me
+and others that he has the truth about the definite, full workings of
+God's plans and purposes, I think of the greatness of 1,600,000,000
+stars, each with 1,600,000,000 humans, and of the unnumbered generations
+gone by, and say that verily, we must live TO-DAY and do the best we can
+to-day in act and thought and word.
+
+Yesterday is dead; to-morrow is unknown. Where we have been, where we
+will be, we know not. Where we are to-day, we know, and only God in His
+omniscience knows the final answer as to our future estate.
+
+He will take us and hold us and place us in His keeping and according to
+His purpose, even though we do not or cannot follow or believe any one
+of the little man-formed creeds, isms or cults as the measure and rule
+for our beliefs.
+
+Those stars testify to the certainty of God, and I believe in Him.
+
+
+
+
+51.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Success and Envy.]
+
+When a man by his brains, or by a fortunate combination of
+circumstances, rises to a position of prominence, he becomes a target
+for the envious and a pattern for the imitator. Emulation and envy are
+ever alert in trying to steal the fruits of the leader or the doer of
+things.
+
+The man who makes a name gets both reward and punishment. The reward is
+his satisfaction in being a producer, a help to the world, and the glory
+that comes from widespread recognition and publicity of his
+accomplishment. The punishment is the slurs, the enmity, the envy and
+the detraction, to say nothing of the downright lies which are told
+about him.
+
+When a man writes a great book, builds a great machine, discovers a
+great truth or invents a useful article, he becomes a target for the
+envious many.
+
+If he does a mediocre thing, he is unnoticed; if his work is a
+masterpiece, jealousy wags its tongue and untruth uses its sting.
+
+Wagner was jeered. Whistler was called a mere charlatan. Langley was
+pronounced crazy. Fulton and Stephenson were pitied. Columbus faced
+mutiny on his ship on the very eve of his discovery of land. Millet
+starved in his attic. Time has passed, and the backbiters are all in
+unmarked graves. The world, until the end of time, will enjoy Wagner's
+music. Whistler and Millet's paintings attract artists from all over the
+world, and inventors reverence the names of Fulton and Stephenson.
+
+[Sidenote: The Price of Greatness.]
+
+The leader is assailed because he has done a thing worth while; the
+slanderers are trying to equal his feat, but their imitations serve to
+prove his greatness. Because jealous ones cannot equal the leader, they
+seek to belittle him. But the truly worth-while man wins his laurels and
+he remains a leader. He has made his genius count, and has given the
+creature of his brain and imagination to the world.
+
+Above the clamor and noise, above the din of the rocks thrown at him,
+his masterpiece and his fame endure.
+
+And compensation, the salve to the sore, makes the great man deaf to the
+noise and immune to the attacks of the knockers.
+
+In his own heart he knows he has done a thing worth while; his own
+conscience is clear, and he cares not for the estimate of the world.
+
+His own character is his chief concern, and he is content in the
+knowledge that time will bring its reward.
+
+If you have high ideals in business, if you achieve success on a big
+scale, mark well, you will be a subject of attacks, of lies, of malice,
+of envy, of disreputable competition. There is no way out of it.
+
+[Sidenote: Compensation.]
+
+But you will be repaid. The lover of fair play, the grateful, true,
+honest, worth-while people will flock to your standard; the riff-raff
+will skulk behind bushes and throw rocks and mud, but their acts will
+prove to the great mass of the people that your purposes, practices and
+policies are right.
+
+Therefore, courage is to be your chief asset; patience, pride,
+perseverance, your lieutenants.
+
+Be not weary, grow not discouraged when your progress is hampered by
+obstacles. Every truly great man of the past has had his backbiters and
+detractors.
+
+
+
+
+52.
+
+
+There are three periods in our lives: the youthful, or prospective
+period, the adult, or introspective period, and the old age, or
+retrospective period.
+
+[Sidenote: Growing Old.]
+
+Too many there are who look forward to old age with fear or dread. But
+old age has its joys and pleasures as well as middle age and youth, and
+these pleasures are the keener if the first and second periods of life
+were lived sanely, worthily and properly. Numerous are the great men of
+the past who have extolled the old-age period of human life with its
+wisdom and wealth of worldly experience.
+
+If the middle period is spent in getting dollars only, then old age will
+be days of empty nothingness.
+
+Youth is the planning time--the time for ideals and ambitions; middle
+age the building time, and old age the dividend time.
+
+With many, old age is spent in reading the book of the past--with
+sadness as the reader recognizes that the ideals, plans and hopes were
+shattered. As age turns the page in the book of the past, he reads one
+hope after another vanished in smoke.
+
+Anticipation is seldom realized, and this is as it should be, for in
+time, men will learn to live each day for each day's good and each day's
+happiness.
+
+Let us perform our duty to-day; let us lay away a kindly act, a smile, a
+word of cheer in the bank of good deeds.
+
+Each of us has a share in this world's work. It matters little whether
+our actual share is what we had guessed or wished it to be.
+
+[Sidenote: The Value of Ideals.]
+
+Vicissitudes will cross our path here and there; so-called misfortune or
+bad luck will strike us when least expected. The failure of our dreams
+should not grieve us. We cannot reach up and grasp the stars, but like
+the pilot at the wheel at sea, we can steer by those stars that help us
+on our way.
+
+Our ideal may not be realized, but the journey to it may still be a
+pleasant one.
+
+Our ideals, plans and hopes had a real purpose, a real service; they
+gave us courage and made us work, and thus they were well worth while.
+
+We must not, in the old age period, condemn ourselves because our plans
+failed or our castles were shattered.
+
+There is no hard luck except incurable disease or death. It is not for
+us to mourn the past or weep for the flowers that are gone.
+
+In our active days, we should realize that we are putting memories away
+in our brains that will come back to us in old age.
+
+Only that which we put in our brains can we take out.
+
+So then, Mr. Avarice, I warn you: If gold is your God, it's cold comfort
+you will get in your sunset days.
+
+Build up loving ties, appreciation and the worth-while riches of good
+deeds, and in your evening of life, you will be welcome wherever you go.
+
+[Sidenote: Put Not Your Faith in Gold.]
+
+If your life was sold for gold, your evening of life will be short and
+miserable; legatees will grudge you your every breath; they will endure
+you simply because they are checking off the days from Time's calendar
+until the day of your passing, and the dollars you sold your soul and
+heart and life for, will be lavishly spent by cold-blooded heirs who
+cared nothing for you.
+
+Leave a legacy of love, example and character, and if, with these,
+there are a few dollars, they simply prove your frugality, economy and
+independence.
+
+A few dollars left to heirs will help. Many dollars will hurt. Dollars
+in old age will give you pleasure by helping in tight corners. They will
+enable you to help your loved ones over the bumps in the road.
+
+Use the dollars to help those you love to help themselves, and your old
+age will be a busy, happy one, and you won't be in the way.
+
+To prepare for that happy period of your life, the foundation must be
+built in the active to-day period.
+
+Carry smiles into your old age; they will keep the heart young, the
+digestion good, and life will be worth while.
+
+
+
+
+53.
+
+
+I have traveled horseback over the great arid plains of the West, and
+have read the story of the ages gone before.
+
+[Sidenote: The Remote Past.]
+
+In Arizona and New Mexico there are ancient ruins of forts and cities
+built by people we know not of. Chalcedony Park with its petrified
+forest of mammoth trees silently testifies to a period when vegetation
+was rampant on what is now a desert.
+
+In Wyoming there is coal enough to furnish fuel for the United States
+for several centuries.
+
+Coal is carbon made from decayed trees and vegetation, which became
+covered with earth and rock, and was subjected to tremendous pressure
+throughout the thousands of years required to effect the transformation.
+
+Oceans and floods gradually covered millions of acres of trees and
+plants with ooze and soil and sand. Ages turned some of these deposits
+to stone.
+
+There in bleak Wyoming is testimony and evidence of changes that time
+only can bring about.
+
+"A thousand years is as a day and a day is as a thousand years." Thus
+wrote the scribe of old. So, then, we must consider this estimate of
+time in reading the first chapter of Genesis which describes the order
+of the world's creation.
+
+First took place the dividing of light from darkness, thus bringing
+about the rotation of day and night.
+
+Then, the separating of land and water; then, the birth of vegetation on
+the land, the creation of fish and reptiles in the sea, the fowls of the
+air, the beasts of the field, and finally, the higher animal, man.
+
+[Sidenote: The Measure of Time.]
+
+The pages of the earth's surface carry in their stratification indelible
+records harmonizing with this scriptural account of the evolution of the
+earth from its chaotic misty past to its concrete definite present. Yes,
+this earth of ours is old, so old that mere man cannot contemplate or
+accurately estimate its wondrous age.
+
+The fossils of the mammoth reptiles and beasts which lived before the
+appearance of man on this planet are numerous in the fascinating West I
+know so well.
+
+In those arid desert hills are bones of the ancient rhinoceros--parent
+of our horse--and there are shells, and fossils of fish, and bones of
+animals imbedded in the strata of rock.
+
+Man reads these pages and he is lost in bewilderment, impoverished in
+thought, dumb for words, paralyzed by his inability to co-ordinate this
+evidence with any measure of time that will fall within the range of
+human comprehension.
+
+[Sidenote: Age of the Earth.]
+
+Historians say the world was 4,004 years old before the Christian era,
+and 1918 years have passed since then, making the age to date 5,922
+years. It is not surprising that through the dark ages, dates and facts
+were lost. We have not a complete history in written language, but we
+have some very definite history in the rocks and hills and lands and
+seas.
+
+The world certainly is more than 5,922 years old. Read the record of
+time so plainly visible at Niagara Falls.
+
+Niagara Falls eats away about two feet of rock in a century; the gorge
+is a good many miles long. At the present rate of erosion, it takes
+2,640 years to eat away a mile. Multiply that by the distance between
+the falls and Lake Ontario and you have an idea of how many years
+Niagara Falls has been at work.
+
+Before Niagara Falls was in existence, the country round about was
+under the sea; before that, under glaciers; before that, in the tropics,
+and I don't know how many times it has swung on its pendulum between
+Frigid, Temperate and Torrid Zones.
+
+We are certain to become lost in a labyrinth of mystery when we take
+these known facts concerning the earth's age, and try to specify any
+particular number of millions of years as the old world's age.
+
+
+
+
+54.
+
+
+And now my pleasant occupation of writing this book draws to an end. I
+sincerely hope you have received some definite suggestions that will be
+helpful to you.
+
+To get you to think--that has been my aim. To get you to analyze
+yourself--to take stock of yourself--to know yourself--that has been the
+task I set before me.
+
+[Sidenote: How to Think.]
+
+Think vital thoughts of courage, faith and hope. Then will your days
+pass joyfully, and your path be one of peace, happiness and contentment.
+If you fill your mind with gloom and sorrow thoughts, your surroundings
+will reflect your mental attitude and will accentuate your misery and
+dejection. Do not give way to this weak, gloomy, pernicious thinking.
+You can be strong, you will be strong if you learn to control your
+thought habits.
+
+Can you face disagreeable facts without wavering? Can you meet adversity
+with courage in your heart and a smile on your lips? You can, if you
+have read this book carefully, calmly, thoughtfully, and put into
+practice the rules I have laid down.
+
+Do not think that you can go through life without your share of pain,
+disillusion and disappointment. It can't be done. No man has ever done
+it. Clouds will come, but they can be dispelled. Obstacles will arise,
+but they can be surmounted. Troubles will visit you, but meet them
+boldly and courageously and do not show the white feather.
+
+To the thinking man or woman, life is a great arena wherein good and
+bad, joy and sorrow, faith and disillusion, happiness and unhappiness,
+success and failure are inextricably intermingled. The joy and
+happiness, accept gratefully; the sorrow and disillusion, bear with
+fortitude. And remember, although it is not possible to enjoy an
+absolute and continued state of happiness, it always lies within your
+power to have serenity, poise, peace and contentment.
+
+When you are in the dumps--when that feeling of the hopelessness and
+un-worth-whileness of life comes over you, then, more than ever,
+_think_. Do not give way to fear and despondency. Think cheerful
+thoughts; think of the good things that life has given you, not the
+least of them being life itself. Think of the ringing words that Milton
+put into the mouth of Lucifer, the fallen angel, in "Paradise Lost":
+
+  "The mind is its own place, and in itself
+  Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
+
+[Sidenote: Life's Ever-Newness.]
+
+To the person who thinks, life is ever-new, ever-interesting. If you
+have lost your grip on reality--if you have dwelt too long in the
+shadowland of doubt, fear and despondency--the thing to do is to correct
+your thinking. Let your mind soar in contemplation of the beautiful
+things of nature. Steel yourself against petty pull-backs and recognize
+them for what they really are--trifling annoyances that serve no purpose
+except to distract you from the pursuit of the great and glorious goal
+that lies ahead.
+
+Only to the thinking man is it given to see life and see it whole. He
+only has the true sense of proportion. He keeps his eye on the main
+objective, secure in the realization that he is master of himself and
+captain of his own soul. He is self-sufficient, for he knows that no
+matter what befalls, he carries happiness and contentment within himself
+wherever he goes.
+
+The practice of thinking is a tower of strength. If you are a thinker,
+life's little troubles serve but to reinforce your spirit of resistance
+and make you stronger.
+
+So then, let this be my last word to you--_think!_--for it is by
+thinking that man has risen to his present high estate in the world. It
+is by thinking that the future joy and happiness and peace of the world
+must be increased.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Think, by Col. Wm. C. Hunter
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