Part 3

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."