Part 4

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.