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Title: Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep
Author: Hunter, William Crosbie, 1866-
Language: English
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EVENING ROUND-UP
More Good Stuff Like PEP
by
COL. WM. C. HUNTER
Author of
Pep--Dollars and Sense--Brass Tacks
Ginger Snaps--and Other Books
[Illustration: the author]
$1.00 Net
Published by
Hunter Service
Kansas City, Mo., U. S. A.
Copyright, 1915
by Wm. C. Hunter
CONTENTS
Page
Anger 150
Brass Tacks 250
Character 252
Church 180
Closing Note 242
Continuous Happiness 86
Crying Babies 218
Dad 215
Daughters 138
Diet Rules 71
Doing Things Twice 34
Dollars and Sense 249
Dreams 97
Egotism 188
Elimination 82
Fake Medicines 177
Food 134
Friends 104
Geology 193
Ginger Snaps 251
Girl 221
Gloom 46
Happiness 49
Home 68
Inventory 185
Insomnia 156
In the Big Woods 124
Laziness 119
Leaders 231
Making Plans 14
Man's Danger 108
Medicine 57
Mental Pleasures 206
Mistakes 159
Mother 128
Natural Law 18
Negative Attitude 73
Nerves 38
Observation 28
Old Age 234
Our Bodies 131
Our Sons 111
Panama 209
Patriotism 197
Pep 246
Perseverance 190
Personal 22
Pessimists 43
Pills 173
Pioneer Mothers 145
Poise 142
Practical Helps 26
Reading 61
Real Charity 100
Religious Extremes 114
Ridicule 200
Salt 154
Self Accusation 89
Sincerity 167
Speculation 225
Stars 228
Thought Control 53
Time 238
To-day 212
To-morrow 161
Verbomania 65
Walking 78
Wives 203
Woman's Beauty 94
Worry 9
Dedicated
to Nancy, my wife
FOREWORD
Each evening, just before retiring, we will have a little Round-Up of
the day's doings, of the problems in our business and home life, of our
hopes and ambitions.
We'll try to solve perplexities, dissolve worries, absolve ourselves
from pull-backs, and resolve to better our lives.
We'll plan and prepare that we may have more poise--efficiency--peace;
that's Pep.
We'll learn how to establish helpful thought habit that our lives may be
full of gladsome notes instead of gruesome gloom.
We'll aim at
LIFE--LOVE--LAUGHTER
These, then, are the purposes of this book.
WM. C. HUNTER,
Kansas City, Mo.
July 18, 1915.
WORRY
The Nerve Racking Pace That Causes "Americanitis"
Nervous breakdowns are increasing as a result of the American worry
phobia.
This high tension Americanitis presumes too much upon nature, by
persistently forcing the nerves to carry loads far beyond their
capacity.
So many people are pleasure mad, they become so deadened by excess of
enjoyment and indulgence that ordinary pleasure is uninteresting. They
seek unnatural excitement, original methods and unusual activities to
appease the appetite. Then they become blasé and constitutional
pessimists.
It's a maddening, nerve racking pace they go. To keep up the gait there
is an incessant battle for wealth, and the struggle wears and weakens
the nervous systems.
Both men and women go the terrific gait. Men and women having this
health-destroying worry, mate and marry and they lay foundations for
deficient progeny that suffers from the sins of the parents.
The phobia is almost universal; it has permeated all classes of society
from highest to lowest.
Excitement, that's the keynote; for the rich there is society and polo
and useless functions and conventions.
Society is a game of cards, not only playing cards for money, but the
card convention of paying calls by leaving pasteboards in lieu of the
old-fashioned visit.
Society is the builder of fourflushers, the generator of
insincerity--falsehood and rottenness.
For the poor, the aping of the rich, in dress the wearers can ill
afford, the picture shows, the cheap theatres, the automobile, bought
with a mortgage on the home.
It's rush, push, excitement at any cost. The great cost which they don't
seem to consider is the cost of the nerves.
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 suggestions made in this book.
There are few advance danger signals shown by the nervous systems, 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.
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."
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 action, habits and stunts that knocked you out and follow our
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 Pep, which means poise, efficiency--peace.
I realize nothing bad 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.
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 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.
MAKING PLANS
How to Use Our Assets to Best Advantage
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 time spent in
preparing his plans is the most valuable employment of his time. 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 plan 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.
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 is no definite or exact rule that will apply, without
exceptions, 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.
In my previous book, "Pep," I particularly emphasized the importance of
taking a few minutes each evening and using the time for sizing up
things, by inventory, analysis, speculation, comparison and hypothesis.
I have received many comments about that particular suggestion.
I find that many of the great captains of industry who are
accomplishing things worth while, have learned the value of this daily
habit.
Mr. E. C. Simmons, the president of the Simmons Hardware Company, has
for about fifty years followed this daily sizing up plan. He takes
fifteen to twenty minutes each evening in seclusion, with closed eyes,
and finds the weaknesses of his plans, formulates new plans, and
generates new ideas for the morrow. He says this habit is one of the
greatest contributing factors to his success and to the building up of
the largest hardware business the world has ever known.
I want to help YOU to form the habit of rounding up each day's
activities in the quiet, relaxed, uncolored, unprejudiced secluded
environment of your home. Each evening we will together size up
things--a sort of daily round-up.
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
inventory, to thresh out problems.
So let us relax and reflect in these evening round-ups.
NATURAL LAW
Obedience Is Rewarded, Violation Is Punished
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 his fellows.
The man of character focuses his attention on truth, and on fact.
He uses theories with fact, to aid his progress, but he recognizes that
theories, without fact as a safety ballast, is a useless expenditure.
Theories without fact leaves man in a rudderless boat; he gets nowhere,
he only drifts.
Theories often help to get at facts, 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.
The Evening Round-Up is intended to be a companionable, helpful text
book, a counselor and a friend.
We 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.
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.
While we live we shall never get away from our thought; 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 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 shall be worth while and positively helpful
if we take the trip with conscientious applications, 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 has joined us in our pilgrimage.
PERSONAL
Are YOU Pleasant to Live With?
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.
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.
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 ways 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.
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.
Every girl wants to catch a husband. Remember this, girls: A pleasant
disposition is more benefit than seven barrels of beauty cream.
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 onto a hundred generations
and make children happy a thousand years from now.
Be pleasant to live with and the people will turn to you as you pass and
shine your cheerfulness like the sunflowers turn to face the sun.
Be pleasant to live with and you will have more pleasant things to live
for, and 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, 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 criticize 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, then 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.
PRACTICAL HELPS
Dealing With Actual Conditions You Are Facing
I have been fortunate in having splendid eye-sight and hearing, and with
these, a good memory.
I've traveled much and my education has been getting experience directly
or learning experience directly from those who had experience.
All the while I've had to do with, and about business and social
problems, and with and about the things which worry and perplex the man
or woman in the business as well as the home world.
I am trying to stage this book, and our relationship, upon practical
things we are to talk about. I want you to know and feel I have hoped
and feared even as you have.
I am in the midst of these things even now as I write this book. I am
not in a reflective mood, living in the past or glorying in deeds of
other days. I am writing this today and of today, even as you are
reading it today.
By day I face reality and problems, and temptations and tricks and
frauds and deceits, and after the day is over I write these lines and
try to inoculate myself with a serum or toxin that will serve as a
safeguard on the morrow to ward off the things which try to annoy and
distract me from my purpose: to do, and to be, as nearly right and fair
as I can, in act and thought and word.
Continuity on a singleness of purpose is a valuable thing. Fabre spent
his life studying insect life. His books on the spider and others on the
life of insects are the result of a whole life spent on the one hobby or
study of insects.
My occupation has been full of abrupt changes. Each day is a
kaleidoscope, and so, as I write between times, these chapters may be
like the boy who said of the dictionary, "a mighty powerful book but the
subject changes so often."
I write these chapters as the spirit moves and opportunity allows, and
you may read the same way. But be sure you make opportunity happen
often.
OBSERVATION
Sitting on the Side Lines, Watching the Crowd
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.
See the rushing, surging crowd. Man, pushing 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.
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 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.
Away from the crowd is the little group who have learned a great truth,
which is, 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 enjoys what he has to the full extent.
The wise man is he who gets the 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 of 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.
The man who discovers means to help his fellowman, does a good act, but
it is the man with the dollars in front of his eyes that 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 TODAY. That great crowd I see below my window thinks ever
of tomorrow and forgets TODAY.
Those who think always of tomorrow will never get the beauties and joys
from life that comes to the little group, of Today, who appreciates and
enjoys the real Now, rather than the pictured Tomorrow that never
comes.
It's mighty interesting to watch the crowd go by and speculate on their
movements.
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 fund from which to
speculate, in 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.
DOING THINGS TWICE
A Common Habit That Saps Nerve Power
It is hard enough to do duty once, but doubly hard when you anticipate
mentally everything you have to do tomorrow.
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 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 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: "Tomorrow a
lot of fruit will be ready to preserve. I am worrying where I shall put
it. My fruit closet is full."
The woman had every reason to say to herself "sufficient unto the day,"
yet she was doing the preserving mentally today and tomorrow 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 had mental obsessions of worrying about the things we were
going to take on our trip; then worrying over the routine of our work
when we 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, 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.
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 tomorrow's duty,
and turn to pleasures, rest, relaxation and enjoyment of today.
These little round-ups we have each evening are fine to switch the
thought current from tomorrow's duties.
It is to get a definite, different thought habit fixed, that I ask you
to give me these few minutes each day when 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 round-ups we have will help us, and keep us from working
mentally tomorrow'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 be cause 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 is human, and not a studied literary effort.
Just get the human viewpoint and don't criticize the words used or the
sentences I construct.
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 so doing.
NERVES
The Doctors' Most Difficult Problem
"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."
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 forks in the roads. One road leads to incurable
insanity, the other to curable melancholia. Right here is where heroic
action is needed by the sufferer.
Here is where the sufferer must exert his will power, 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
on the danger rocks and go to pieces.
Melancholia is where is offered a good chance for Christian Science.
Mental suggestion, 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.
"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.
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 discord, to build
instead of destroy.
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 carefully this book from cover to cover 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 and by friends to whom I passed 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 labyrinth of scientific technical terms. They 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.
Don't worry or criticize this book. Take my suggestions in the spirit
offered.
PESSIMISTS
Give Them the Cold Shoulder
The calamity howler is found in the midst of peace and plenty. 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 peace destroyers talk of their rights and they expect and demand
the same privileges and benefits that are earned by the man who uses his
head.
These ghouls are born without heads; they just have necks that grow up
and are covered with hair. These brainless mollusks are now telling the
people that the Sultan of Sulu is to capture Texas and that Japan is to
invade Indianapolis; Germany is to capture Quebec, and France is to
siege Milwaukee.
The howlers spread talk of yellow peril and black plague to follow. They
spread doubt and fear; they tell you the capitalists are awake nights
trying to starve you and that they employ inventors to discover new
methods of torture for the poor working man.
They accuse business men of grinding down the farmer, forming pools,
establishing starvation prices, and ruining agriculture. Yet, as I write
these lines, fat beef cattle sell for $10.00 a hundred on the hoof,
wheat is way over $1.00 a bushel, and good farms in Missouri even are
selling at from $100.00 to $150.00 per acre.
Good farm mortgages are hard to get. The farmers have money in the
banks, honey in the house, and automobiles in the garage.
Our taxes in the United States are lower than anywhere on the face of
the earth. Our wages are higher than anywhere in the world. Our schools
better, our opportunities greater.
And in the midst of better conditions and brighter prospects the
shameless, brainless, fameless bipeds pollute the atmosphere, poison
hearts and plant discontent.
If these howlers are any better than foot-pads, thieves, grave robbers,
or child beaters, I can't see it.
And it is up to you and to me to denounce these peace destroyers,
ridicule them, show our contempt for them; they have no hearts, no
souls, they are only decay spots that spread rottenness, disease,
despair, discouragement, contamination and anarchy, and we do not want
such guests at our quilting parties or husking bees.
GLOOM CONTAGION
A Little Study of Faces in a Street Car
This evening I rode home in a crowded street car. What an interesting
study to watch the faces in that car.
Discontent, discomfort, worry, gloominess on nearly every face. Tired
faces, tired bodies from a hard day's work, mouth corners drooped.
Hopelessness stamped on the countenances.
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, surrounding, 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?
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
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 the 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.
HAPPINESS
Hovers Near Us If We Do Not Chase It
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.
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.
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 evenings
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 to him a tale of woe, misery and discontent did
unfold.
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, 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 find
what comes to the pleasure-chaser, and you will know about "vanity and
vexation of spirit."
Do something for somebody. Engage in moves and enterprises that will be
a 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 a
service to mankind.
The real hero, the real man of fame, the real man of popularity, doesn't
arrive through direct 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 speech would stamp him as a master of words and
thought, in the hearts of his countrymen. 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 are rewards, given not to
those who strive to capture, but to those who strive to free others from
their troubles, burdens and problems.
THOUGHT CONTROL
"As a Man Thinketh in His Heart so is He"
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.
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.
If we feed our brain storehouse with trash and fear, and nonsense, we
have a poor material to draw from.
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, 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.
If you have read "Pep" and followed its rules, you are now in a state of
poise, efficiency and peace, and realize the truths of this chapter, for
you learned in detail the rules for your daily conduct, practice, and
how to apply suggestions.
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 women. 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.
MEDICINE
Proofs That Mind Control is 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 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 the aches, pains or ailments can be cured by a
dominant mental attitude and 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
confidence that the sufferer is to get well.
Recently I have spent much time in a large hospital visiting a relative
who had been operated on. I know several 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
and watched the cases of scores of patients.
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 wonderful results of mental suggestion to the discouraged
patients.
To show the effects faith thought will produce, I will relate some
instances.
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 by
the capsule.
I have seen several weary, despondent patients fretting and wearing
themselves out over their so-called weakness and condition. I have
placed copies of "Pep" in their hands and watched courage, faith, cheer
and sereneness come to them.
The reading of "Pep" diverted their minds from self-thought and
self-accusation to faith-thought and courage.
"Pep" is simply powerful common-sense, practical, digestible, hope,
faith, cheer and courage. One brain cannot at the same time hold its
attention on faith and fear, on joy or sorrow, on smiles and tears.
You can only think one thing at a time, and "Pep" or any other book that
can change the habit thought 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'm mighty glad I wrote "Pep" for it has helped many a brother and
sister out of darkness into sunshine, and proved the value of right
thinking and mental control.
I've seen the lifting up of a patient's hope, 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 the
patient.
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!"
READING
Let Your Final Evening's Reading be Good Stuff
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, that were prominent in the evening's
game.
The reason you do not go to sleep after an exciting evening is because
you have set your nerve carburetor at high tension and forgotten to
lower it before you go to sleep.
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.
In "Pep" one of the most beneficial suggestions was that you read its
chapters one or two each evening, after you had undressed, and just
before going to bed.
You will scarcely believe what a wondrous change for the better will
happen to you if you make it a rule to have a brain clearing, mental
inventory, and nerve relaxation every night before you 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 period of soliloquy, or evening
round-up, 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.
One of the common practices in the home circle is reading, and generally
the books or papers read are of the exciting, fascinating, highly
colored imaginative type; people read stories of love, adventure, plot
or crime, and they dream these same things most 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, and 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.
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 Haeckle;
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.
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 apparatus.
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.
VERBOMANIA
A Widely Prevalent Modern Disease
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 on any thought, 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 why there is any perhaps about it. Disease is
an unnatural condition, or function 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.
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 useless 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.
Read the first few chapters of "PEP," particularly the chapter in the
book about solitude and sizing up things.
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.
HOME
Don't Mistake a House for a Home
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.
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
in doors; 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.
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 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 hand shake.
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" housewife 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.
DIET RULES
Seven Sensible Simple Suggestions on Eating
I haven't time in this book to give reasons or show proofs for
everything I suggest. I have explained much in detail regarding the
matter of food, thought, habit and exercise in PEP, but I want right
here to give you a few definite, short, positive, helpful rules that
will pay you most wonderful dividends in health and happiness.
First--Drink two or three glasses of warm, not hot water the first thing
when you arise.
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 need especially the roughage the skin gives.
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 the 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.
NEGATIVE ATTITUDE
A Frequent Crossed Current That Makes Misery
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.
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 indulged in 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 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.
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.
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 free from troubles, cares or little irritations.
Rise superior to these things; those around you are affected and
susceptible to your influence and example.
If you have a "but," and "if," 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.
These negative "driving me crazy" sentences and 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.
WALKING
The Best Exercise I Know of
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, and then you will
require no further urging.
In walking there are two things most important 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, and 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 should rest.
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.
As stated in PEP I walk from my home to my office, something less than
four miles, and it takes me about an hour to make the trip. I walk
through a beautiful park and every morning I see something new and
interesting in bird and animal life, in the vegetation and in the
geological formations through which I pass.
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 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, courage and help to keep you in a
good mood all day.
I cannot too strongly emphasize the importance of walking alone, for
then you have shifted 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 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 on your walk, 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, walk naturally, give no thought to
walking, keep your mind on the beauties of nature by which you are
passing or in pleasant soliloquy and you will feel no fatigue.
There isn't a bit of theory in this chapter; it is positive practical
sense 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.
ELIMINATION
The Body's Safety-First in Keeping Health
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.
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 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 rid 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.
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 from a pint to two quarts of liquid each day in the
form of vapor.
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
insure 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 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, not hot, water 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 out doors at hard physical labor.
Your body is an engine. No use to keep the boiler red hot and two
hundred pounds of steam 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.
CONTINUOUS HAPPINESS
An Impossible State, and It's Well It's So
I am often asked, "Are you happy ALL the time?" My answer is no.
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 that undescribable
something that makes you feel badly; when you have worry or trouble,
then's the time to get hold of your thinking machinery, and modify the
shadows that come across you.
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.
Take the stand of changing your thoughts to confidence, faith, and good
cheer, and busy your hands with work. Think of the happiness periods you
have had and know there is happiness dividends coming to you. Keep this
sort of thought and with it useful occupation, and the sunshine will
dispel the clouds in your thoughts like the sun dispels the April
showers and brings 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 you've had 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.
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 to bear 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.
SELF ACCUSATION
If You Do This You Will Always Be Miserable
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, will make fear,
irresoluteness, uncertainty and weakness of character.
Saying "I can't, I haven't the ability, I am unlucky" and such like
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
accuse 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 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, and a made-up mind
you can't accomplish. No one ever got anywhere with anything with such a
millstone around his neck.
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 was asked to surrender by the
British general with his superior force. By all 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.
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.
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."
Suggest and 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 you 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 surprised at your complete change of attitude and
character more 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 of
Self-accusation.
WOMAN'S BEAUTY
Every Woman Will Be Interested in These Pointers
Sisters, it's your duty to keep your good looks as long as possible, and
to do it you must spend time each and every day on the care of your face
and hair.
First of all, you must keep your skin clean, and that's a particular
job.
You have nearly thirty miles of pores in your body. These pores are
sewers; they discharge in a healthy person nearly two pounds of waste
material every day.
If these pores are stopped up or clogged, the waste material is secreted
in the skin.
The stopped pores secrete the greasy waste matter. This greasy substance
attracts dirt, dust and germs, and soon blackheads, pimples or blotched
skin will result.
Washing the skin with strong soap is not good.
To keep the skin clear and healthy you should massage it with cold cream
and rub gently but thoroughly. This rubbing or massage quickens
circulation, strengthens the little capillary veins and brings that
beautiful pink glow that is so attractive.
The cold cream softens the dry waste secretion and makes it easier to
come out.
After the cold cream application, rub all the grease off with a rough
towel.
Don't forget the daily massage; it will work wonders in your appearance.
It will help give you that fresh, healthy appearance nature intends the
fair sex to have.
Don't be afraid of the sun. Tan is health to the skin and tan with pink
shades beneath it is a pretty combination.
In washing the hair do not use any compound that has ammonia in it.
Ammonia will bring on the gray hairs.
Occasionally you must wash the hair with soap, but let the soap be mild.
Raw eggs make an excellent shampoo or hair cleaner. The egg does not
take out the natural oil necessary to good hair health.
Glycerine and water and lanoline makes a good wash; after using rinse
the hair with hot soft water to get out all the glycerine and lanoline.
Rub the roots of the hair frequently with the ends of your fingers, move
the scalp in circular motion; this is to stimulate the scalp nerves and
blood vessels and the glands and roots of the hair. Scalp massage is
wonderfully beneficial.
The foregoing are the mechanical things to do for the skin and hair.
They help, but the real benefit to your looks comes from the bodily
health and natural working of the organs, particularly the stomach,
lungs, heart and kidneys and bowels.
The most important organs to watch are the kidneys and stomach; their
ailments quickly show effects on the face.
Drink plenty of water, cool, not cold; get plenty of air and sunshine.
Eat plenty of fruit, especially apples, skins too.
Take exercise in the open air every day. Walking is the best exercise.
Air, water, sunshine and exercise will do more for your looks than a
barrel of beauty preparations.
The only way to get health out of a bottle is to keep out of the bottle.
You can't buy beauty at the druggists.
We love our friends for their character, not their skin beauty. Have
good wholesome health and wholesome character and you will look mighty
good to the world.
DREAMS
Hitch Your Wagon to a Star, and Stay Hitched
The great colleges are just now turning out their thousands of graduates
and the great newspapers have much sport ridiculing them with 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 and
said, "poor fellow, he's daffy in the head."
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 to sleep in
New York, 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; today 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 today 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.
REAL CHARITY
Let Me Help Where I Am Rather Than Help in Siam
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
excepting to a very few persons.
Little Spencer Nelson, a poor boy, eight years old, recently died in a
hospital with a little bank clasped to his breast. The bank had $3.41 in
pennies the boy had saved to buy presents for poor children.
The little hero had fought manfully through three months' suffering,
enduring the torture of five lacerating operations. The pain failed to
dim his spirit of unselfishness that 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.
A 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 were to his mother
and the message was 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.
The daily paper chronicles sensational charity, where men vie with each
other to see who can give most and get the most advertising. They
overlook the wonderful love and charity they are capable of, if they
would look into 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 pains 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.
He did not need sensational stories in newspapers or solicitors of
charitable organizations to stir him to action.
He found opportunity at his door, close at home, near by, where all of
us can find it if we only look.
I don't believe much in this far-away charity idea so many have.
I believe in helping those near where I am rather than sending money to
Siam.
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 from the foreign missionary fund.
I know that a bucket of coal in an empty stove, a basket of bread and
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?
FRIENDS
A Most Abused, Too Often Used Word
You have found a friend who has been so much help and comfort to you. I
have such a friend. Tonight I am in the mood to think of that friend and
write him a letter like this:
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 atmosphere 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 unselfish in this respect 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.
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 there is a great sin of omission, which is the refraining
of expressing 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 for you is this little message, to tell you I appreciate
you, I love you, and these words will last after you are gone and after
I am gone, to tell those of tomorrow about you and what those of today
thought about you.
You 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
precious jewels worth while.
I am happy the very moment I think of you. I try to express myself but
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 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 what I feel about you, and how I appreciate you.
You, my inspiration, you who are so sensitized to feeling, so delicately
adjusted to read heart vibrations, you must feel this within me I am
trying to convey to you. 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 all who 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 most diminished proportions, 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 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 more
beautiful white.
And so I bid you good-bye, happy that there is such a 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.
MAN'S DANGER PERIOD
In the Midday of Your Life, Look Out
There is a time in the business man's life between the age of 48 and 52
when the man undergoes a pronounced change in his life.
More big men are cut off at 50 than at any other age between 45 and 60.
At 48 to 52 most men change vitally in their physical and mental
make-up.
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 their wives
who have helped them to their success. They grow tired of their wives
and seek the companionship of young 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 troubles.
Most every man between 48 and 52 who works indoors, eats too much,
exercises too little, sleeps insufficiently.
Here are a few things for the 50-year-old man to do:
Drink two glasses of warm, not hot, water immediately on arising.
Eat an apple before breakfast; positively you must eat the skins too.
The skins have the phosphorus, phosphates, and brain food. The skins
make roughage and keep the alimentary tract active.
Eat for breakfast a little bacon, cooked rare; crisp bacon has all the
good fried out, and you simply have ashes left.
One cup of coffee, an egg or two, some cereal and toast, no red meat, no
potatoes.
Walk to your office if it is less than three miles; if over three miles
ride the extra distance, but walk three miles anyway.
Walk alone. This is most important; it relaxes your brain. Walking with
company makes it a physical exertion and a mental pull as well, for a
man will talk when he has company.
Eat a light lunch; be sure to eat an apple; with it drink two or three
glasses of water, cool but not cold.
Let your hearty meal be supper, eat slowly and don't talk business.
After supper play with the kids or joke with your wife; get a smile on
your face.
Just before you retire read a chapter from a worth-while book. The last
thoughts which you take in at night are the ones which stick.
Leave your business in your business clothes, and get in a good night's
sleep.
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 likely on your way to
a good ripe old age if you take reasonable care of yourself.
OUR SONS
They Pattern After Us; Be Worth Copying
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 old as the hills and it is as
important as it is old.
Today I had the boy problem forcibly presented to me. Today in court
twenty-four boys were brought before the Judge charged with petty
crimes. Three were sent to the penitentiary, seven to 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 mention 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 "gangs" 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 confidante to 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 know the
boy's doings between times.
Pool halls tempt the boys, and these places 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.
If Dad is his chum, if sister shares with him his amusements, if the
family work and live on the "all for one and one for all" plan, if the
boy is kept busy and interested, he can be easily trained.
Neglect him and he will neglect you. Love him and he will love you. Meet
him half way; he's impressionable.
Show him kindness, he will respond. Show him 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 to sixteen
or seventeen, that boy is a mass of plaster of paris, easily shaped
while plastic, but once set, 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. Tomorrow
may be too late.
RELIGIOUS EXTREMES
Form, Frills, Ceremony vs. Excitement, Ecstacy, Enthusiasm
Many churches today are running to extremes one way or the other.
On the one hand they are conducted along the lines of form, ceremony and
ritualism, while the other extreme is excitement, ecstacy and
enthusiasm.
The church of form, 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.
Paul said, "Away with those forms." Christ in ministering to humanity
gave no forms or 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 rituals are much like most associated charities, a
sort of convention. Forms can not 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, form
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 show rather than a plan to satisfy human heart hunger.
Opposite to formal religion is the frenzied "scare-you-to-death"
excitement method, which relies upon mental intoxication to stir the
people, and 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 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 ten to twenty thousand dollars in cold cash for three weeks'
campaign converting the poor suffering people, the thought comes to me,
that if the evangelist is sincere he should 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.
The excitement, intoxicating, frenzy revival method is pretty much
always the same in its working. The evangelist starts in with the song
"Where is My Wandering Boy Tonight," 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 into a high state and droves flock to the altar
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.
It is a sad commentary on the established profession of 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 with its frills or
the frenzied fire and brimstone, scare-you-to-it extremes.
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.
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, and not beautiful churches, 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, an enemy
of his people whom the Samaritan knew was none the less a brother. And
you will remember the priest of the temple, the man who taught charity,
and love, drew up his skirts and passed the wounded man by.
LAZINESS
We Are Becoming a Nation of Sitters
Danger is in extremes. Too much of anything is bad for the human being's
health.
There is a comfortable proportion of exercise and rest mixed together
that will give bodily efficiency. Too much exercise is bad, too little
is bad.
Until recent years our vocations and the 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
arguments 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 the meanwhile, and more than likely reading the sporting
sheet of a yellow newspaper.
Possibly few of my readers have given the matter serious thought, and
they will be astounded at the changed work conditions which have come
into our modern life.
It will be interesting to note just 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. Today 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, a machine makes the change, another machine
does her mathematics.
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 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 I may relax and not require conscious effort as is the
case when one walks with another.
That morning walk prevents me 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 the
trained ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.
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-makers 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, sitting,
comfortable route.
Believe me, dear reader, it is not in the cards to play the game of
health that way. There "aint 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.
IN THE BIG WOODS
A Grand, Glorious, Restful Recreation
This afternoon I am sitting on a glacial rock in the forest at the foot
of Mount Shasta. A beautiful spot to rest and a glorious book of nature
to read.
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
in evidence of her gladness and love of the beautiful.
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 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 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.
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 or 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 that I drink in inspiration of a
worth-while kind. No war news to read, no records of tragedy, 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.
Here in the sanctum sanctorium 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 and soothe and rest and built up those shredded, weakened, tired,
weary nerves. Let the sun put its coat of health and the ozone put the
red blood of strength in your veins.
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 you having the disorder which makes the pain.
No, brother, you can't get health out of a bottle or a pill box. You can
get it from the 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, peace and that spells PEP.
MOTHER
The Most Unselfish Person in the World
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 our
resentment of your plans and your views about the things we did, and you
have had heartaches because of such actions of ours.
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 the 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!
OUR BODIES
They Are Made Up of Mineral Substances
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 consists of these various chemical combinations also.
Seed when planted extracts from the air and the earth the minerals 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
necessary for his body building. Through the animal food he gets the
mineral from the flesh he eats, which flesh was first of all built up
through the vegetables the animal ate.
These are definite facts; there is no theory about them.
The human body 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.
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 definitely convinced that most of the actual physical ailments are
caused by a deficiency of the mineral elements in the body.
Phosphorus and potash are necessary to the human welfare. These elements
are in the husk of the wheat and the husk is taken off in making flour,
and the flour is mostly starch.
The person who lives mostly on white bread will suffer from lack of
phosphorus and potash.
Phosphorus also is found in the skin of an apple, so if you peel an
apple you do not get the phosphorus.
FOOD
The Food We Eat Is Fuel for the Human Engine
The practice of medicine in the past has been directed towards the
curing of developed disease and physical ailments. The practice of
medicine in the future is to be along the line of preventive practice.
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.
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.
The important thing to prevent disease is to keep yourself fit, and the
golden prescription which I have given in PEP will serve to keep you in
perfect health.
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.
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.
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.
We all eat too much, especially too much meat.
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 and man, eat animal food and they are long
lived.
I may be prejudiced, but it does seem to me that the strict vegetarians
are 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 the fads in the matter of eating. The amount a person
should eat is in exact accord with the law of compensation.
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 engine is
called on to perform.
The hotels, restaurants and food purveyors invent palate tickling food
to tease the human to eat, and hotels and restaurants are mostly
patronized by people who do not have much physical work to do; the
consequence is they eat too much.
You do not often find dyspepsia or indigestion among men or women who
work hard physically.
You who work indoors with little physical exercise will find wonderful
benefits if you will cut down the fuel.
You will get sick if you pile in more fuel than is necessary for the
engine.
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.
Much of the physical trouble comes from filling up the boiler too much.
Cut down the food and you will feel better.
DAUGHTERS
A Message From a Daddy's Heart
Dear little Mary Elizabeth and Nancy Lou and dear little girls
everywhere who read these lines: here is a message and a wish from
daddy's heart.
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.
May the mirror never reflect paint, rouge or make-up on your face. A
little talcum powder is all right.
Do not look upon matrimony as a means to provide food and finery for
you.
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.
When I was a beau I courted my sweetheart in her home. My treat was red
apples and a walk down the lane. Most every beau nowadays courts his
girl with a taxi to the theatre, and red lobsters after the dinner; ten
dollars they pay where I paid ten cents, and I had ten times more
happiness.
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.
Keep your voice low, be gentle, sweet, kind, human and simple; that is
what my sweetheart is; that is why our married life has been a honeymoon
all these years.
Watch out for word candy 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.
Fine feathers never make fine birds; don't borrow finery; don't be
attractive for your fine dresses; the men attracted by fluff, frills,
feathers and furbelows are not worth shucks.
Be square with yourself and square to the man who is after your heart;
put yourself mentally in the place of a wife, when a man gets serious.
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.
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.
Learn to cook and to sew. You can't be happy and idle at the same time.
Learn to be independent of dressmaker and milliner and cooks. You may
have them, I hope you will, but master these useful vocations yourself,
then you will have dresses and hats and dinners worth while.
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 sorrow.
Be the golden, pure, old-fashioned, sweet, simple, quiet, modest girl
who knows things, rather than one who is a show-off girl.
And here's a tip to you, young man, who reads these lines, get a golden
girl like I have described; a girl of pure gold and not glittering
tinsel; a sweet, natural, sensible girl, that will do team work and be a
helpmate to you and not a drawback and money spender.
Daddy knows these things; he's been around the world. He is endowed with
an ability to observe, analyze and benefit.
He's had experience, he's seen the world from cottage to castle, and
these things he tells you because of his love for you and because he
wants you to have such a home life as he has.
And these truths, these hopes, are from the very bottom of his heart to
his daughters Mary Elizabeth and Nancy Lou and all the other girls who
have read these lines.
POISE
A Necessity to the Person Who Accomplishes
There are men who cannot be kept down by circumstances or obstacles.
These men progress 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, of course, alert and alive to favorable opportunity and
helpful influences when they come 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 in to 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 iron ore in our life's vessel, it deflects the compass
and prevents our holding to the course.
There are splendid worth-while things for us to do and with continuity
of action and singleness of purpose 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 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.
Solitude beats society, relaxation beats conventional function, and
foolish so-called pleasures.
Our energy hours must be devoted to our purpose and ideals. Atween
times we must rest, relax and recuperate 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."
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 today. It
makes us weak and fills us with fear and it draws the day of our
departure nearer.
Today is ours. Live, freely, fully today. Be unafraid, unhurried, and
undisturbed.
We are building character, and the way we build it is by mental
attitude, by our acts, and the way we employ the precious time today.
Lay hold of the great forces of nature, realize the wonderful power of
the will and you will be strong, a veritable king among men.
PIONEER MOTHERS
Knitting From Necessity Today, Knitting for Pleasure Tomorrow
As I write these lines I am riding on a slow train through Oklahoma.
Purposely I am in the day coach smoker for that's the place to study
local color, and see the natives.
The atmosphere around is oil and gas, the talk is "bringing in a
gusher," "tanks," "rigs," "leases," "wild cat sales," "offsets,"
"selling stock," and the like; all the phrases, all the talk is striking
it rich, getting money.
Indians, Mexicans, Negroes, college boys in surveying crews and
speculators form a hodge podge. Men from all parts of the states are
here seeking dollars.
I have been around these oil and gas fields in autos and by teams. I've
been observing life, character, passions and habits.
I've seen brave women here with nursing babies living in tents or
patchwork shacks. Some of these women dream at night of silks and satins
and mansions and position.
By day these poor women work and mend and cook and sew, doing their part
to help things along. Many of the husbands are earning five to eight
dollars a day and spending most of it on foolishness. The poor wives get
only enough for bare necessities, and yet they patiently work and mend
and cook and sew.
Talk about patience; talk about devotion; talk about grit; talk about
courage; just come down to the oil fields and see these poor pioneer
women.
Talk about selfishness; talk about cowardice; talk about brutality; talk
about debasement; come down and see some of these men making $25 to $50
a week and never a cent in their pockets Monday morning.
Woman is called weak--that means the rich woman--the poor woman
possesses strength that psychology cannot explain. Men can be analyzed,
but you are at a loss to understand woman. Poor women grow into a sweet
replica of their mothers, the most unselfish, patient, generous,
forgiving, lovable, adorable creatures on earth.
Man grows away from his mother; he roughens and cools and grows selfish
and expects and demands the woman shall love him with all these faults,
and generally she does.
The poor woman makes an idol of her husband and in her love thinks he is
ideal.
Let him spend his money, she sticks to him; let poverty and want come to
the home, she sticks. Let ill treatment be her portion, she sticks; and
withal there are smiles on her lips most of the time.
I'm sorry for the poor woman in the oil fields, and the only glimmer of
compensation I can find is that she doesn't have nervous prostration
like her wealthy society sister has.
Those little husky children I see over there in the yard playing Indian
will likely know the worth of a dollar later on. I peep into the future
and predict that those boys will get on in the world, and Mother who is
chopping wood for supper I see some day with a nice black grosgrain silk
dress and a ball of knitting in her silk hand bag.
I see her from necessity knitting stockings for her children. In the
future some day, far beyond want, for her sons will be successful men,
she still is knitting and mending and helping, a smile on her lips and
a soft light in her eye.
Plump, round and well fed, she sits there knitting with pleasure and
dreaming of the pioneer days she spent in the Oklahoma cabin. Yes,
that's the picture of the future.
The train is pulling into a city; I don't want the picture of the poor,
hard-working, unselfish, sacrificing woman and her worthless husband to
remain in my memory.
The sons will come out all right; they always do when they have a
shiftless dad and a good mother. And somehow in this great open splendid
Western country there is opportunity for such boys.
The big men here were all poor a short time ago. Their grandfathers were
rich, their fathers spent their inheritance, they suffered poverty and
want and their extremity was the son's spur to ambitious activity.
In the car are four young sports coming home from college on a vacation.
Their daddies are all oil kings, and these youngsters will inherit
fortunes.
Those youngsters who were playing Indian will get on in the world; these
four young millionaire kids will go broke; their heads are not shaped
right; their jaws slant back; it isn't in them. I know something of
character.
Bye-bye, Mamma, with your little cabin and your boys; some day you will
have peace and plenty.
Those four oil Johnnies will marry girls who have plenty and some day
those girls will have to do the family washing.
The wheel turns, it's the history of the past. From shirt sleeves to
shirt sleeves in three generations.
Lincolns, Garfields, and Edisons came from just such little cabins and
just such rough, hard, bare life as I have been seeing this afternoon.
ANGER
It's a Temporary Mental Derangement
Anger and acts of 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 in five minutes' anger than nature can repair in a
day.
Anger makes weak stomachs, dizzy heads, poor judgment, lost friends,
despair, sickness and likely the confirmed habit will 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 finish loser.
Serenity is a God's blessing and 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.
I know you are tempted, goaded and your limit of endurance is sometimes
exhausted.
I know 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 had imposition, ingratitude, insincerity and advantages 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 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 me, but it would bring
gloom and despair to that person and would not make me any less
cognizant of my innocence.
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.
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 and accepts 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 could be angry, but I couldn't live and enjoy and write books like
"Pep" and this book if I let anger get in and spoil the serenity which
is mine.
I've tried both plans, anger and 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."
SALT
It's a Drug; Too Much Is Bad for You
Don't eat too much salt. Salt is a drug; it carries with it lime and
magnesia and they tend to clog up things.
Too much salt will likely cause gall stones or gravel.
Some persons sprinkle salt over potatoes, beef and everything they eat;
it's a bad practice.
You get enough salt in your bacon, and in the meat you eat. The food as
it comes from the kitchen has plenty of salt in it.
Those who eat too much salt must suffer.
People have told me that the craving for salt was a natural thing; it
isn't so, it's a cultivated taste. You didn't like salty olives the
first time you tasted them.
Because deer and cattle greedily lick salt is no proof salt is natural
and good, and needed in quantities. Cattle and horses will eat loco weed
and when they get the habit they will eat and eat until they get crazy.
Man will crave tobacco; it isn't a natural taste, it's merely a
cultivated taste.
The desire for excess salt on everything you eat is a habit and a bad
habit.
It tends to make calcareous deposits in your system, and it will affect
the blood and the muscles and the bones.
Nature puts practically enough salt in the food and cooks certainly add
enough salt in their seasoning to furnish all the system needs.
Excess salt eating dulls the finer sensibilities of taste just as excess
pepper or Worcester sauce or mustard does. It kills the fine natural
flavor.
There's enough salt in butter to season the eggs you eat. Try your eggs
next time without putting pepper and salt on them.
Learn to get the natural flavors and you will enjoy your food more.
Remember again excess craving for salt is simply evidence that you have
a drug habit, not as dangerous as other drug habits, but bad for you
just the same.
Check yourself every time you reach for a salt cellar.
Watch the children; don't let them eat too much salt.
INSOMNIA
It's Caused By High Mental Tension
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.
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 keep up high tension all day on business matters, and
high tension all evening in threshing all over again the business of the
day, are almost sure to suffer from insomnia.
The continuance of the day and night habit of thinking of business
brings on the insomnia habit and that starts the auto suggestion 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.
To get refreshing sleep you must get physical tiredness. Take exercise.
Walk in one direction until the first symptoms of becoming tired
appears, then walk home. Take a hot bath, then sponge with cold or cool
water. Put a cold cloth at the head, 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. Soon the sandman will
come.
Concentrate your mind on auto suggestion 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 counting 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, so then tomorrow 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.
MISTAKES
Not the Making But the Repeating, Is Your Danger
To live down the past and erase the errors, live boldly the present.
Do not chastise or condemn yourself for mistakes you have made; you are
not alone; everyone has made missteps, has hurt others, has wronged
himself.
Everyone has had trouble, reverses and misfortune; it's the plan of
things, and these things come to give us experience and correct our
future acts by the knowledge of how to avoid errors and wrongs.
Yesterday is dead; forget it. Face about; live today; 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 today 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.
Lies are always added to truth in telling of one's misdeeds. Be brave;
weather the storm, it will soon blow over. Tomorrow the world will
forget.
You've suffered in your own conscience; that's all the debt you can pay
on the old score.
Now, then, get busy with the glorious opportunity 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 their foreheads the crowds you pass
would all wear their hats over their eyes.
I'm trying to comfort you, and slap you on the back and tell you 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.
TOMORROW
A Little Analysis of Our Relation to Eternity
One man says the present is everything, the eternity is nothing.
The other man says eternity is everything, present is nothing.
I believe the real truth is, both are man's chief concern, and neither
is 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 definitely knows much 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
demands 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 today. 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.
That there is a future most of us agree, because good sense and logic
points 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 estate will have influence on our
future estate.
We know positively of today, and the happiness we can get from good
deeds done today.
If we will have power in the future to look back to today's acts, well
and good, if today'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 today, calls it nothing, and accepts the
intangible unknown eternity as everything.
It trades the definite for the indefinite. It calls life a bubble, a
vapor, a shadow. In fact, it makes gloom on today's sunshine and puts
its believers into a purgatory; a dismal unhappy punishment antechamber
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 definite
pleasures and evident life of today, and worried into an intoxicated
colored belief in the expected happiness of the undefined future.
He refuses to think of definite life of today 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 today which is in his hands, he loses this
opportunity during his definite existence, and lives on future hopes in
a future state which no man today knows what it will be.
Both theories as ultimate beliefs are wrong, yet each has some truth in
its conclusion.
By taking the words eternity and present and saying both means
everything, we avoid extremes and form a truth that is rational, and
harmonious to good reason.
The man who says present is all does so because he is an utilitarian. He
acts on the definite 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 opportunity, example 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 helped 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 bad, 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.
If I live and act today in 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 today, disregarding all around me, selfishly catering
to personal purpose, believing that eternity is everything and present
is nothing, I am passing definite opportunity to do good now, for a hope
of personal reward in an eternity, the which is indefinite as to what it
shall be.
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 fear thought, mine is faith thought, in the all wise, all
powerful, all seeing, all right Ruler of the universe, who gave me my
life, my brain, my reason, which I am trying to use, as nearly as my
limitations will allow, to helping myself and helping others to smile,
to be happy, to be serene, to be confident, to be competent, to be
useful.
This is as I see it. I wouldn't do what I do, think what I think or act
as I act unless I were sincere.
Below all this is charity, which means you have the unquestioned right
to do and to be what your best thought and conscience tells you to do
and to be.
Nevertheless it is well to reason with one another on the subject of the
now and the tomorrow of our existence for it is a universal subject on
which all men must make a decision.
SINCERITY
Do Not Accept Sincerity as Proof of Truth
"I believe in him because he is so sincere."
You've heard that, haven't you? I never could understand why a sensible
person would use such logic.
Sincerity is no evidence of truth. The Hindu mother is sincere who
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 that medicines will cure
disease.
The Theosophist is sincere, the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Christian,
the Pagan, the Mohammedan, the Buddhist, the Sun-worshipper, 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, is all truth.
It is true 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 guide.
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, arguments, examples and so-called proof that gives them
facility in arguing the case or expounding their doctrine.
You can make no gain to try to argue with a Christian Scientist. You ask
for concrete rules, definite answers and other proofs than their flat
statements, and you are told you have not the understanding, that your
attitude is not in the right plane, and that the truth cannot be shown
you.
You are told to have faith, 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. That health 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 today, the practices and beliefs, differ from
the vogue of fifty years ago.
If the Protestant religion be all truth what became of our religious
ancestors who died before Martin Luther found the truth?
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 say 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 may be satisfaction and necessary for the possessors of that
sincerity, 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 am unjust to myself if I force myself to accept your
viewpoint without full belief myself that you are right."
So, then, because a person is sincere in a belief that is contrary to
your conscientious belief, do not be disturbed or swerved from common
sense analysis or 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.
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, or 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 not necessary or good for us to waste time on
spiritualism or theoretical beliefs that cannot be proved to our own
selves satisfactorily.
We are asked to believe these strange, impractical, unnatural beliefs,
because of the sincerity of others. It's better to do, and to be the
thing we can ourselves measure, understand and sincerely believe.
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 the exact rules
for the world to obey, should be classed with those other misguided men
and religions which burned human beings who dared to doubt their right
to the possession of all truth.
God never gave his approval to any one man-made religious sect.
God is the universal good power; man often tries to interpret God's idea
to his own selfish narrow vision.
PILLS
The Man Who Has a Pill for Every Ill
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.
The 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
they are necessary.
Exercise, diet, correct habits of living will prevent congestion and
illness that cause pain.
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 the stomach, 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 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 list 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 murder in slow degrees for they are surely shortening their lives
by this poison dope pill habit.
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 had seen the derelicts in the hospitals I have seen, if you had
seen the wretched bodies, destroyed nerve systems, the drugged,
shattered, hopeless patients resulting from the baneful pill habit, you
would be as positive as I am in saying 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.
FAKE MEDICINES
Like Whiskey, the End Is Near
Whiskey must go. It is written on the pages of the records of man's
progress. Likewise must the quack doctor and the fake medicine go.
The side-whiskered advertising doctors are nothing short of criminal
when they by powerful use of words magnify symptoms and feelings to be
grave, serious fore-runners of awful disease, and by fright, bring in
the hypochondriac to his spider-web and filch him in a manner no better
than a thief uses. The thief is really more honorable, for he steals
because he wants your money and makes no bones about it.
The doctor charlatan steals your money under the guise of being your
benefactor.
As I have explained in "Pep," illness, feeling out of sorts, local pains
and sickness, unless of the contagious or infectious kind, are largely
conditions of the mind and of food habits, and surely are accentuated by
fear thought.
Because people have off days, and aches and pains, the frock-coated,
white lawn tie doctors and pseudo professors work on the minds and
imaginations, magnify trifles into troubles, then when the victims lose
courage these charlatans rob them under the guise of professional advice
and treatment.
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, so as to make long bills and
many visits for the quack doctor.
Read "Pep" and fool the doctors. Your health and happiness are things
largely in your own control.
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 to which man is progressing,
that the respectable papers will not lend their aid to swindling
doctors. The best papers will not carry these doctor or fake medicine
ads.
Before long the government will pass laws on this baneful, shameful,
quack advertising. Quack doctors, gambling houses, liquor selling, are
all swindling methods to get money, and in the getting they 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 are things of the past. You can't get health
out of a bottle.
And this is true.
THE CHURCH
It Is Hampered By Too Many Sects
No two minds can see the same picture, nor can two persons with logic,
on religion, come to the same definite conclusion.
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 your
enemies."
Two hundred years ago they burned witches.
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. Today 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.
The protestant church divides itself into a lot of sects, each one built
on some particular ordinance or practice and each one swallows a camel
and strains at a gnat. One sect insists that baptism shall be by
immersion because the disciples baptized that way. They believe in
following customs 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.
One 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 the church considered it a sacrilege to use an organ.
Today they have orchestras and hire operatic singers.
So it seems that the church is broadening out. Thinking men believe that
religion should not be an auto-intoxication of self-condemnation or
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.
I am thoroughly convinced that the church must recognize that evolution
is taking place, that we are to 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 all get
together in the great field for a common cause rather than trying to
maintain little independent vineyards.
Religion must teach smiles and joy, courage and brotherly love, instead
of frowns, dejection, fear and envy.
It must teach how to be and how to get good out of our today on earth.
If we are good and do good here, we certainly will help our future
prospects.
Certainly 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 the sect, cult, ism, and doxy barriers
until we all join 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 with a lot of creed paragraphs and beliefs. That
promise doesn't have any buts or ifs. It doesn't say we shall be saved
whether we are Methodists or Catholics, or Baptists or Presbyterians.
Those names are man-made, and 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 there 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.
INVENTORY
A Necessary Practice to Bring Efficiency
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 guess work.
This inventory deals with money and things which are mixed more or less
with the human element and affected more or less by conditions or 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.
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 must put down in the debit side the
pull backs, hindrances and other business killers in the list of
liabilities. These items are smoothness, untruth, unfairness,
grouchiness, impatience, worry, ill health, gloom, meanness, broken
word, unfulfilled 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, all other persons. Did you lie to, cheat, steal from 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 driven them further from you?
Analyze your spiritual account. Is your religious belief a sham or
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.
Be fair in your inventory. Write down the facts in the two columns
"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 go bump some
day.
EGOTISM
Those Who Decry It Most Have It Most
The ego is in us. It is good to have, but egotism needs the soft pedal
when we speak or do things.
Many people are unconscious of their egotism yet they suggest between
lines in their conversation, "even I who am superior to the herd would
do this or that."
For instance, two persons were arguing about the merits of an
inexpensive automobile. Parenthetically I may say 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.
The egotism crops out often 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 manner 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
our I's it makes trouble.
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 most any other thing 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'.
PERSEVERANCE
It Is the Last Step in the Race That Counts
Four hundred and twenty-three 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 about the ship to Spain.
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 today.
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 on like Columbus did has not increased, perhaps.
Columbus sailed with three ships, the largest sixty-six feet long. He
steered to 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 at the last.
But Christopher kept the ships pointed West, through rain, shine,
through drifting breezeless days and through storms. He kept on, and on
and on, and he brought home the bacon, which being interpreted means
success crowned his efforts.
Perseverance and pep produce prosperity, peace and plenty.
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--are particularly profitable if
pursued until you ring the bell.
GEOLOGY
The Earth's Incontestable Pages of Truth
On the wall in the room where I write these lines is a fossil herring
which the boys dug up in the Rockies near Frozen Dog, at an altitude of
six thousand feet.
The herring is a salt water fish proving that the country around Frozen
Dog was at one time under the sea.
A few weeks ago, in the Missouri River bottom near Omaha, some Harvard
scientists discovered the remains of three ancient towns, one buried on
top of the other.
In the Nile valley in Egypt nine towns, in one location, have been
unearthed, each town in a different strata of alluvial deposit.
The ninth or top city is the ancient City of Memphis, once the largest
city in the world.
Those cities and the mute eloquence of my fossil herring plainly point
out the fact that the world is millions of years old.
Last summer I found some coral on Washington Island, which is off the
point of land where Lake Michigan and Green Bay meet. Coral is only
formed in salt water.
Geologists tell me that Washington Island and surrounding country
plainly shows marks of three distinct glacial periods.
Several times the poles were in the tropical climate, and consequently
the tropics or the temperate zones at least were under permanent snow
and ice.
The earth changes its axis every few thousand centuries, that we know.
The rains and snows wash the earth to the sea, depositing layers of sand
and sediment, which as the ages go by, turn to stone and form permanent
pages that man may read in succeeding eras.
During the world's changes, vast surfaces of earth and rock are lifted
to mountain heights and other places lowered and the sea covers them.
Thus the habitations of man have been buried, new earth covered them,
new towns were built and again the covering process.
Scientists are deciphering the story of the earth and its people.
Babylonia and Egypt left records which our learned men can read, but
ages and eons before these ancients there were races who could not
write even crude picture or hieroglyphic languages, and probably we
shall never know much about these very old times.
Around our Mississippi Valley we know of Mound Builders before our
Indians. In the Southwest the relics of the cliff dwellers are abundant.
This summer at Salt Lake City I saw seven mummies of fair-haired people
that were discovered in Southern Utah.
Near Naples, in digging a well, the workmen found statuary, jewelry and
cooking utensils. The Italian government began excavating and they
opened up to modern gaze an old city. The town was Pompeii.
People may now walk the streets of old Pompeii as freely as the streets
of Kansas City, and the old pavements are likewise worn and torn like
the present streets of Kansas City.
The residents of Pompeii had fine plumbing, baths and luxuries.
They had a place called a vomitorium. The old Roman sports were
gluttons; they stuffed themselves, then went to the vomitorium and threw
up so they could eat more.
Near Pompeii is the ancient buried city of Herculaneum, but it is
covered with lava, hard as granite, while Pompeii is covered with ashes.
Our western hemisphere is called the new world, but all parts of the
world are equally old.
The Missouri River swelled up and washed out a big cul de sac and bared
those three towns near Omaha. We haven't dug much in America but likely
in a few years we will discover some old towns equally as ancient as
Pompeii.
Verily, this earth of ours has had humans on it for more than the 6,000
years our written records give as its age.
PATRIOTISM
An Intoxicant That Often Turns Men Into Murderers
A false patriotism, an inherited acceptance of servility and obedience,
makes the foreigners meek, sheep-like men.
This great war, and most every great war of the past, is possible
because of a distorted understanding of patriotism.
Patriotism began away back yonder when sons and daughters were taught
love and loyalty to the pater, the father. The patriarchs of old
extended the patriot idea to the tribe and later as tribes banded
together and formed nations. The patriotism principle was the basis for
the bond that tied men together for a common cause.
Now patriotism is bounded by geographical lines and national boundary
lines. The patriotism is most sincere, and most solemn, for men
willingly sacrifice their lives for it.
But, really, this patriotism is one of the narrowest and most cruel
forces in the world. It causes wars, waste and desolation. It makes
jealousies, braggadocio and keeps up the fight spirit.
The false patriotism is an obstacle to broader human progress, brotherly
love and the finer things in life.
Kings and 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 spells home and love and association, is a natural and a beautiful
sentiment.
But patriotism, as fomented and fostered by governments for war spurs
and goads, is a monster that lives on blood.
To keep this false patriotism alive, wars must be made, so that human
blood can be secured to save the monster from perishing. Human blood
fires and intoxicates this false patriotism behemoth.
And so, on slight pretexts Kings are insulted. War lords have put out
chips on their shoulders on purpose to be knocked off, and when the chip
is brushed off then comes the declaration of war.
The banner, patriotism, is flaunted in the air. It is the shibboleth of
the red blooded, hot headed, bravest and best of the nation, the youth,
who die in countless thousands--for what?
Such patriotism is failure and worse than failure. It is hindrance to
civilization.
These bewildered men have let reason escape, and intoxicated false
patriotism poison come in their brains to take the place of reason.
In their delirium they try to appear consistent, logical and abused. In
their extremity they try to co-ordinate their acts with God's mind.
Each nation has its own interpretation of the Divine will. Each asks
Divine help for his nation.
God looks at the maddened millions of insane murderers and his heart is
torn as He sees the avalanche of tears shed by bereaved wives and
children.
The patriotism that is responsible for starting this war is a mockery, a
snare, a delusion, and deserves the profoundest contempt of every man
who loves his fellow man.
Europe has certainly put riot in patriotism.
RIDICULE
A Poor Vehicle for Humor
The man who ridicules everything is on the toboggan slide and he will
finish the slide as 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.
Ridicule and sarcasm are often coated with would-be humor, and try to
pass for puns. By and by, however, this 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.
People will listen to you for awhile, if you good-naturedly ridicule a
thing, but when you are known to have the habit, then is when friends
give you the go-by.
Sarcasm and ridicule wound deeply; they are hot pokers jabbed in
quivering flesh.
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.
Safest way is to run no chances. 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 element anyway; the only good it can be is by
reflex or rebound force.
Ridicule is conceived by the humor idea. It is used because it so easily
lends itself to a seeming clever way to create a laugh.
Humor of the clean sort is a rare gift. Humor may easily descend to low
comedy by 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 such brain-constructed people 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 you can get by 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 and up from the depth is so very hard.
Ridicule and sarcasm are cheap, slapstick methods to produce fun. They
leave a sting many times when you are not aware of it.
When fighting whiskey, sin, corruption or evil hosts, then use burning
ridicule and caustic sarcasm to sizzle and destroy the things that need
to be destroyed.
Now I've told you, and 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.
THE WIFE
She Is Your Partner, Don't Cheat Her
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 the partnership basis, or there's sand in the
gear box.
Give the wife the check-book; let her pay the bills; tote fair with her;
show her and give her just what your income affords, and what economic
and wise administration warrants; she'll cut the cloth to fit the
garment.
When the husband questions every turn, every move, 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 any requirements of economy; they are
pretty birds, and used to preening and smoothing their plumage and
looking pretty.
It's the female instinct in the human. In the animal world the male has
the plumage and does the strutting and fascinating act; but in the human
animal the female is the bird with the bright plumage.
You can't expect her to know about pennies and purses and prudent
purchases the moment you slip the ring on her finger.
But she's an intelligent filly and she'll go in double harness much
better if trained and coaxed and petted than she will if she is
haltered, broke and a Spanish bit put in her mouth by the husband's
stinginess.
She'll shop better than her husband if he takes an interest in her
shopping and encourages her in her 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, detective, lawyer-like
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 have
the right idea. They share home responsibilities and do fine team work.
I think they are mighty happy, too; daddy red breast looked mighty proud
as he hustled worms for the family breakfast.
Mamma 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 in the sleeve, then worry and trouble comes
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.
MENTAL PLEASURES
The Rarest, Sweetest Pleasures in the World
There are two principal pleasures man seeks; one is material pleasures
and that takes in about ninety-nine per cent of the human family.
The other, the one per cent, seeks mental pleasures, and this little
group is the one that gets the real, lasting, satisfying and improving
pleasures.
Material pleasures are eating, displaying, possessing, and society.
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 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 comes 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, action, strain and high tension.
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 banquets, theaters, dances,
automobiles, parties, bridge, clubs and society doings.
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.
Get the home reading habit. Don't over-do 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, proper and enjoyable
when taken in moderation.
When you get started reading worth-while books on science, on history,
on geography, on travel, on natural history, you will get into an
inexhaustible field of pleasure and satisfaction.
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 pleasures.
PANAMA
The Man Who Found It and the Man Who Used It
Four hundred years ago Jim Balboa climbed a mountain peak on the Isthmus
of Panama, and looked on the boundless Pacific and said: "I have this
day discovered you, and henceforth the geographies will perpetuate this
great event."
Little did Jim think that by 1914 ships of twenty thousand tons would
sail through the impassable mountains.
Jim knew he had discovered something great, but little did he dream of
the real greatness of the world's future. Little did he dream that the
vast new continent on whose neck he stood was to hold the greatest
nation of the twentieth century.
Gold, new territory for kings, new fields for the church--were the
magnets which drew early navigators like Balboa to the land in the West
across the Atlantic.
Those early adventurers little thought of exploiting their discoveries
for the benefit of mankind.
It is a long time and a far cry from Capt. Balboa to Colonel Goethals,
from the discoverer to the constructor, and it is our good fortune to
see and enjoy a work beyond the wildest dreams of Columbus, Balboa,
Cortez and the other wanderlust adventurers.
Not only that, but the Panama Canal, now opened to the world, was for
years deemed a chimerical dream and an impossibility, by the world as
well as by most Americans.
Every ditch digger, including the great De Lesseps, proved a failure, so
to Yankee grit in the person of Goethals belongs the credit for the
completed work which is now called the "Eighth Wonder of the World."
The Pyramids, the hanging gardens of Babylon, are wonders, but we have a
Yankee contractor who can duplicate them if anyone puts up the money for
the job.
We do not build pyramids or hanging gardens because they serve no useful
purpose.
The Panama Canal is a greater wonder and is a most practical benefit to
mankind. It doubles our navy; it enables us to move supplies of every
kind from one coast to the other quickly and less expensively.
It shortens the world's highway between the oceans and helps every human
being.
Balboa's name will live in geographies as the discoverer of the Pacific
Ocean, but Goethals' name will be remembered as the man who made most
use of that discovery for the benefit of mankind.
The shades of Balboa and De Lesseps likely stalk around Panama at
midnight and rub their eyes in amazement.
TODAY
The One Time in Our Keeping
As I walk on the old Santa Fe Trail each morning through Penn Valley
Park in Kansas City, the marks of time are plainly visible.
Erosion of water and wind have bared the sedimentary rocks and exposed
the layers in well defined pages so I may study this great rock-paged
geology book, and indeed it's a pleasure to me.
Back of all is the grand plan of the Universe of which this earth is an
atom. That plan is ruled by a Divine law and power.
For you or me to take a fragment of truth and attempt to pass it as a
definite science, a complete religion or all truth, is an assumption
which these records of countless ages frown upon as a hopeless, bootless
task.
All science has some truth; all creeds, sects, isms and cults likewise
have truth, but no branch or group possesses all truth.
My fossil fish on the wall wiggled his tail thousands of years ago,
very likely millions of years.
He lived and died in accordance with the plan of the Creator of the
Universe and you are an atom and I am an atom in that Universe and
governed by the power that gave life and crushed to death that fossil
fish.
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 deeper mystery.
We shall not know all truth until the great revealing time.
We cannot change the pages of the millions of years gone by. We can do
very little to change the pages of the millions of years to come. What
little we can do, we can only do TODAY.
Today 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 and try to lift ourselves in
sublime thought into the higher faith thought and realize that we are
part of Him and His plan, and failure is impossible to us, if we keep up
and on, doing good, speaking softly, dealing gently, showing kindness
today and living in accordance with the big, broad, generous, charitable
plan instead of the little, bigoted, narrow, selfish 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.
DAD
All for You, Old Man, and It's Timely
This is your inning, Dad.
There has 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 we love
you and how 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 sacrifices, 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
after all your loved ones are more comfortable and happy, and time is
passing, Dad; the marks of time are showing on your poor, tired head;
the wrinkles of care are marking your face, and the roses are bleaching
from your cheeks.
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, and it's your duty to have, happiness and pleasures
and health and joys, right here now today.
Your loved ones do not want you to spend your health 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
responsibility and work out their own problems. They will be better if
you let them gain knowledge by practical experience.
Come on, Dad; get in the group and enjoy things now and you will live
longer and you will 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. Come on, Dad, we all want you to
do these things.
Leave your cares at the office; come on and play, and you will be so
much better and stronger and so much more successful in your business.
Let's have the corners of your mouth turned up tonight at the supper
table; be part of the family, Dad, not a poor, tired bread winner.
We don't want to hear any more sh--sh--or whispers when you come home.
We don't want to feel that restraint and uncomfortable feeling; 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?
CRYING BABIES
When They Cry There's a Reason; Find It
Now come the wise doctors with the injunction to let the baby cry. They
tell us it's good for the baby's lungs and that the baby needs the
exercise and all that sort of rot.
They augment this with the statement that if we soothe or coddle our
babies they will get the habit and require our attention always before
they go to sleep.
Old Mother Nature has been pretty successful in raising animals. Let the
kitten, dog, pig or chicken give the sign of pain or distress and the
mother will hasten to its offspring and nestle it.
When a baby cries, it's because it's hungry, or too warm or too hot or
too uncomfortable, or it has pain or distress. It's just nature's
instinct given by God to the helpless infant that it may call attention
to its trouble. The doctor would complain if uncomfortable. The doctor
or the parent can help himself, but the baby can use its only signal, a
cry.
When baby cries it should be taken up and soothed. Don't pay any
attention to the doctor who says the baby cries to be petted; baby can't
reason in its infant days; its little brain hasn't reached the reasoning
powers.
Doctors constantly protest and warn us against over exertion on the part
of children and even adults; yet they tell us to let the few-weeks-old
baby cry, which is the most violent and extreme exertion it can put
forth.
Crying puts a strain on all the baby's vital organs and its delicate,
fragile blood vessels and heart. There have been thousands of babies who
have had irreparable damage done to their constitutions because of this
cold-blooded, heartless fad of the doctors, to let baby cry.
Many a mother's heart is torn and wrung because of the doctor's order,
"Let the baby cry."
The mother is worked up into an excited nervous condition by the
doctor's inhuman order to let the baby cry, and this same doctor tells
her not to become excited because it will have a bad effect on her
nursing baby. Just read this paragraph over again and see if the doctor
hasn't crossed his logic wires and insulted common sense.
The doctors become calloused; they are used to seeing pain and
suffering. It's easy for them to endure pain in others, and easy for
them to give them heartless orders.
And generally the doctor who affects most knowledge about baby rearing
is the one who has no babies of his own.
Dr. Walls of Chicago is one of the most eminent child specialists in the
world and he agrees with my conclusions in this matter and so does most
every really great child specialist I know.
When baby cries, find the reason; change its position; see if there is a
pin sticking; find out whether it's heat, cold, hunger or pain.
There's a reason why babies cry. My wife is emphatic on that point and
she has reared three mighty fine babies, and I have watched and helped
her.
GIRL
Be a Know Girl, Not a Show Girl
Girl, what a wonderful creature you can be. What a glorious success you
can make of your life, if you get the right start, 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, that it is not to be
wondered why so many girls lose their heads and make a fizzle of their
young lives.
The fizzle is generally because daddy and mamma have a lot of foolish
notions about bringing up the girls. Especially is this so if the
parents are wealthy.
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, estranged
from her mother, later on 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 there are a lot of
"doings" which she attends, then comes the show-off which is called a
debut.
She is shown off like a filly at the horse show, and some high-collared
young man wins her head although she thinks it's her heart. She thinks
it's the thing 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, has children, 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 got in 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 study simplicity, sentiment, sense, sereneness, sweetness,
rather than envy, frills, feathers and foolishness.
God's noblest woman's calling is the work for children and home.
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 can if necessary.
With the ability to cook and sew you can properly direct the cook or
seamstress, and they will respect you for your education.
The painted, powdered, tinsel, fluff, feathers and furebelow girl may be
dashing 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 be an attraction to the girl who makes the
fizzle of her life, but sweetness and simplicity, and sentiment and
sense, are precious jewels that will endure for all time.
Be that sweet girl. Do not be the "show" kind, or the blow kind, be the
real "know" kind, and you will grow in the hearts of all who love
reality and hate artificiality. We all love the "know" kind--the sweet,
simple, sensible girl who knows.
So here's my hand, little sister, little daughter, little girl, and to
you here are also the sweetest thoughts of mine heart, for I picture you
through eyes, and through a heart, that sees two sweet little girls of
my very own.
I am going to stick mighty close to my girls and try to bring them up to
be real girls who will be loving, lovable and loved.
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.
SPECULATION
You Can't Earn Your Board on the Board of Trade
I've been riding through the golden wheat belt of Kansas, and estimated
the new wealth; for that which grows is the only real profit or wealth.
All else are trades, speculation or bookkeeping accounts.
The farmer plants the wheat. God makes it grow and we eat it.
But in a big building in an amphitheater in the city, is a crowd of wild
men in shirt sleeves, perspiring, shouting, making signs, clawing the
air. This crowd never raised wheat, but they raise pandemonium. It's the
board of trade; its job is getting the wheat from the farm to you and me
who require it to live.
I've recently visited the biggest food market in the world, the Chicago
Board of Trade. Below the gallery sat a nice dignified elderly man who
wrote a note on a slip of paper, folded it and gave it to a boy.
The boy was off like a shot to the wheat pit; he gave it to another
white-haired young-faced man of cultured, refined, even scholarly
bearing, so different from the row raisers in the pit.
This nice man was the floor man for a big grain commission house; he
read the message, and then did the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act. He
turned red, purple, and green. His neck swelled, he threw back his head
and screamed while he held up his hand and five fingers. Each finger
meant 5,000 bushels of wheat; five fingers meant 25,000 bushels to sell.
In an instant, like a pack of wolves, the other crazy men raised their
hands with bent and twisted fingers, the sign language of the pit.
The old man made a sign, the wheat was sold. He was Dr. Jekyll again; he
yawned and was composed once more.
Soon a boy came with another slip, and the old man went mad again. I
asked my host if it wasn't pretty busy today; he said "no, it's a dull
market."
That 25,000 bushels of wheat was sold half a dozen times. Every broker
who handled it got a commission. The buying and selling was speculation.
Outside the board were the hangers on, the down-and-outs, the has-beens,
who used to be in the pit and throw fits like the nice old man I've
described.
These has-beens have the speculation bug, and hope they can come back
some day and make fortunes out of lucky guesses.
The only ones who make money on the board of trade are the company who
rents offices, the cigar man, the lunch man, and the telegraph
operators, and the commission men who get one-eighth of a cent a bushel
either way the market goes. Some of these commission men get the
speculation bug and go broke, and yet there are callow youths and
business men and clerks and other outsiders who believe they are smart
enough to speculate on the Board of Trade. That belief helps fatten our
penitentiaries.
No outsider ever made money on the Board of Trade if he stayed with the
game. And the speculators on the inside graduate to the down-and-out
class if they play long enough. There's a group of millionaires who
control them and all others are pikers.
You can't beat the Board of Trade; it's not in the cards.
STARS
A Little Study of the Universe
Tonight 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.
It is midnight. I will not reach my destination until 1:30 in the
morning. Two fellow passengers in the car, after cussing their luck,
have finally gone to Snoozeland, while I call the passing hours
opportunity.
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.
The late Franklin Adams photographed the whole canopy with 206
photographs. He counted the stars by mathematical plans, and gives the
conclusion that there are 1,600,000,000 stars, and that number is just
about the number of humans on this earth. So then there is one star for
each of us.
Each of those stars, practically speaking, is larger than the earth.
Many 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 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, and that he can give me and you and them
definite rules and patterns for our belief.
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.
These are tangible things; 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, verily we must live TODAY and do the best
we can today in act and thought and word.
Yesterday is dead, tomorrow is unknown; where we have been, where we
will be, we know not. Where we are today we know, and God in His great
plan knows only 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.
LEADERS
Are Ever Subject to Backbiters
When a man by his brains or by fortunate combination or circumstances
arises 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 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 few.
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 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 its end will enjoy Wagner's music, Whistler and
Millet's painting will attract artists from all over the world, and
inventors will reverence the names of Fulton and Stephenson.
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 had made his genius and the creature of his hopes and brains known 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 make success, 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.
But you will be repaid. The lover of fair play, the grateful, the 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; with patience, pride,
perseverance your lieutenants.
Be not weary, grow not discouraged when your progress is hampered by
obstacles.
OLD AGE
The Pleasures of a Well Lived Life
There are three periods in our lives: the youth period or prospective
period, the adult or introspective period, and the old age or
retrospective period.
Too many there are who look forward to old age with fear or dread.
But old age has its joys and pleasures as keen as youth or adult age, if
the youth and adult ages were lived sanely, worthily and properly.
If middle age is spent in getting dollars only, then old age will be
days of empty nothingness.
Youth is the planning time of ideals and ambitions, middle age the
building time and old age the dividend time.
With many, old age is 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 today, let us put away a kindly act, a smile, a
word of cheer in the bank of good deeds.
Each of us has our share in this world's work. It matters little whether
our actual share is what we had guessed or wished it to be.
Vicissitudes clip us here and there, so-called misfortune or bad luck
will strike us when least suspected. 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 and 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 but incurable disease or death. It is not for us
to mourn the past or weep over the vases from which the flowers are
gone.
In our active days we must realize we are putting memories away in our
brains that will come back to us in old age.
Only what we put in our brains we can 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 worth-while riches of good deeds,
and in your evening of life you will be welcome in the midst of the
group.
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, and
helping 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 today period.
Carry smiles in your old age; they will keep the heart young, the
digestion good, and life will be worth while.
TIME
What Geology Tells Us About Time
I have traveled horseback over the great arid plains of the West and
read the story of the ages gone before.
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 and 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 trees and vegetation covered with earth and
rock, pressed, and preserved through the thousands of years necessary to
change it from vegetable to carbon.
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 history of the sequential events in the first chapter of
Genesis which describes the order of the world's creation.
The arrangement of the formation of the world was the dividing the light
from the darkness, conforming to the rotation of our globe and
consequent 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.
And the pages of the earth's surface carry in their stratification
indelible records harmonizing with this scriptural arrangement 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 mere man cannot contemplate or
accurately estimate its wondrous age.
The fossils of the mammoth reptiles and beasts which lived before the
ken of man 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 for expressions, to co-ordinate the
evidence with any man measure of what the age of the earth is.
Historians say the world was 4,004 years old before the Christian era
and 1915 years have passed since then, making the age to date 5,919
years.
The first records speak of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and up to the
time Cain went to the land of Nod there is no record of any other people
in the world.
It is not surprising that through the dark ages dates and facts were
lost and even there may have been mistakes in translations.
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.
There must have been people in the world when Cain went to the land of
Nod, for the Bible history says Cain took unto himself a wife and his
wife bore him a son and she named the son Enoch, and she builded a city
for her first born and the name of the city was called Enoch.
The world certainly is more than 5,919 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 under the tropics, and
I don't know how many times it has swung on its pendulum between Frigid,
Temperate and Tropic Zones.
So you see we are getting lost in a labyrinth of mystery when we take
these known facts concerning the earth's age and try to definitely set
any particular number of millions of years as the old world's age.
CLOSING NOTE
A Little Appreciation to Everyone Who Reads This Book
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; that's my first purpose.
I have more books in my brain in embryo. They are hatching out and you
may look for books of mine to appear every once in awhile so long as
ability to write is mine.
There is an indescribable something in my relation with my readers that
is sweet beyond words to tell. I look upon you, the readers, as brothers
and sisters; yes, more than that, you are my friends.
As I travel both in this country and abroad I drop in book stores and
meet the friends who sell my books and from them I hear some mighty
pleasant and enthusiastic expressions of approval. Appreciation is worth
more than dollars.
The daily increasing sales of my books is due to one thing, and that is
that you, my readers, my friends, are telling your friends to buy my
books. This personal interest and recommendation is advertising of the
most valuable kind.
Because you get your friends to buy, the sales are good and that's
encouragement. It's the spur that keeps me ever writing, planning, and
studying, that I may write more books.
So here is my hand of friendship, my heart's gratitude, my complete
appreciation of your interest and patronage.
We've spent many pleasant moments together in these evening round-ups,
and until we meet again in person or through one of my books, keep good
thoughts working for your benefit. Get serenity, poise, power, purpose
and good cheer.
You can be strong; you will be strong so long as you control your
thought habits.
Life is beautiful, it's well worth while. Clouds will come, obstacles
will confront you, troubles will get in your way; but each and all of
these will disappear, if you keep on your way, with courage, smiles,
will power, and perseverance.
And from me and my loved ones to you and your loved ones here are all
good wishes, and encouragement, and sympathy, and love, all tied
together with this golden thought: let us help one another while we
sojourn here today, and as we do it--let us
LIVE
LAUGH and
LOVE
Thus endeth our Evening Round-Up.
Col. Hunter's Books
Pep $1.00
Evening Round-Up 1.00
Dollars and Sense .50
Ginger Snaps .50
Brass Tacks .50
Character .25
Friends .25
Col. Hunter's Motto .10
(Brass)
[Illustration: pair of open books]
Any of above sent postpaid upon receipt of price.
Address
HUNTER SERVICE
KANSAS CITY, MO., U. S. A.
PEP
[Illustration: book cover]
A Book of
Poise
Efficiency
Peace
By Col. Wm. C. Hunter
Real Self Help
Optimism
Health
and Happiness
224 Pages - $1.00
A MESSAGE
--to you who are rushing along, to tell you--"Slow Up!" A cry to you who
are lagging behind--"Brace Up! Catch Up!"
Do you need a lift or a push--sympathy or a slap on the back--are you a
help or a hindrance to yourself? In either case, you don't care what's
wrong--you want to know what's right! Let this book tell you. When you
are willing to help yourself, here is a ready friend to point the way.
It tells you how to analyze your assets and how to cash them in to
realize the best results from those assets.
Col. Hunter says: "Nothing I have ever written has given me so much
pleasure, for I receive thousands of letters from those who have been in
shadowland, tired, discouraged and miserable, and they now have courage,
strength, ambition, hope, poise, efficiency and peace through reading
the experiences and following the suggestions of PEP."
This remarkable book is 7¼ × 4½, 224 pages. Narrow 12 mo. fits the
pocket. Author's portrait. Pep is beautifully bound in cloth.
Sent postpaid anywhere for $1.00.
HUNTER SERVICE
KANSAS CITY, MO., U.S.A.
Evening Round-Up
by Col. Wm. C. Hunter
[Illustration: book cover]
More Good Stuff like
PEP
256 pages, $1.00
This book is the same size as PEP but has thirty-two pages more. The
following foreword of the author tells its purpose:
"Each evening, just before retiring, we will have a little Round-Up of
the day's doings, of the problems of our business and home life, of our
hopes and ambitions.
"We'll try to solve perplexities, dissolve worries absolve ourselves from
pull backs and resolve to better our lives.
"We'll plan and prepare, that we may have more poise--efficiency--peace;
that's PEP.
"We'll learn how to establish helpful thought habit, that our lives may
be full of gladsome notes instead of gruesome gloom."--The Author.
The Evening Round Up will be appreciated and welcomed by all who have
read PEP. It's a great, inspiring, practical, plain, powerful book. It
is brilliantly written, and most fascinating reading.
Delivered postpaid anywhere for $1.00.
HUNTER SERVICE
KANSAS CITY, MO., U. S. A.
Dollars and Sense
by Col. Wm. C. Hunter
[Illustration: book cover]
This Great Book
Has reached a sale of a half-million copies
Price 50 Cents.
A practical book of business "horse sense," containing 130 pages of
boiled-down, successful, practical experience. It treats of the vitals
of business--from the inside; of expense; fixed charges; overhead;
buying; selling; advertising; credit; debt; employer and employee. It is
suggestive, simple in language and systematic in arrangement. It
embodies little theory but much tried-out truth. It has a real
dollar-and-cent value to employer and employee.
You will find interest and benefit in its pages. Fully a half million of
these books have found appreciative readers. It has been bought in large
quantities by heads of firms and of departments to give to those under
them. The investment brings a substantial return to both.
Bound in cloth; size, 4½ × 6¼ inches.
Sent to any address postpaid for 50c.
HUNTER SERVICE
KANSAS CITY, MO., U.S.A.
Brass Tacks
By Col. Wm. C. Hunter
50 Cents
[Illustration: book cover]
A volume of "capsule optimism," full of smiles, cheer, courage and hope
Brass Tacks is a unique publication, so-called because Col. Hunter gets
right down to "brass tacks" in advancing pointed optimisms, level-headed
truths, driven-home common sense. It is a book of vital paragraphs and
concrete ideas dealing with the life issues of every day. A suggestive,
terse guide to right thinking along the highway of humor and
hopefulness.
There are sentences to remember for their keen analysis, their brevity,
their wit. You will like "Brass Tacks" if you like to get somewhere and
get there quickly. There is entertainment and inspiration. It is the
kind of book you re-read--and find new meanings and help each time.
Bound in cloth; size, 4½ × 6¼ inches, a handy size to slip in
the pocket and read at odd moments.
Printed in two colors. With half-tone portrait of the author.
Sent postpaid to any address for 50 cents.
HUNTER SERVICE
KANSAS CITY, MO., U.S.A.
Ginger Snaps
By COL. Wm. C. HUNTER
[Illustration: book cover]
This Great Book
will reach a sale of a million, we hope.
Price 50 Cents
GINGER SNAPS is a book of business helps. It is one of the best business
books from the pen of Colonel Hunter, and he declares it even a better
book than its famous companion, Dollars and Sense.
Ginger Snaps is up to the minute in helpful, practical business
suggestions, profitable plans and good ideas.
It is the same size as Dollars and Sense, printed in the same type, and
on the same quality of paper. Ginger Snaps is printed on heavy paper and
bound in imitation leather cover, semi-flexible.
The size of Ginger Snaps is four and a half by six inches. It is a
handy, tasty volume for pocket, for traveling bag or library table.
Ginger Snaps is often bought in quantities by manufacturers, jobbers and
business houses to give to employees. It's a splendid book for this
purpose.
Price 50 cents postpaid.
HUNTER SERVICE
KANSAS CITY, MO., U.S.A.
Two Beautiful Gift Books
[Illustration: book covers]
CHARACTER
25 Cents
A beautifully printed gift book in art designs and colors. Cover
embossed. Book bound with silk cord. Character is one of Col. Hunter's
best heart and soul outpourings. A beautiful book for your reading
table. A splendid book to give to your folks.
FRIENDS
25 Cents
A touching appreciation of the much abused word, Friends. Printed on
heavy art plate paper, illustrated in colors and gold ornaments. Cover
embossed in silver.
Every friend of Colonel Hunter who knows and appreciates his human,
feeling style will love this book.
Either book sent postpaid anywhere for 25 cents.
HUNTER SERVICE
KANSAS CITY, MO., U. S. A.
Col. Hunter's Motto
Price ... 10 Cents
Engraved on heavy brass
Exact size of illustration
[Illustration: Be pleasant every morning until ten o'clock, the rest of
the day will take care of itself Wm C Hunter]
This favorite motto of Col. Wm. C. Hunter, with his signature, makes a
fine pocket piece. It has a hole in the center so you may tack it up on
your desk, dresser or on the wall. It is engraved in heavy brass,
background with black, baked enamel. This beautiful souvenir sent
postpaid to any address for 10c or $1.00 per dozen.
Hunter Service
Kansas City, Mo., U. S. A.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep" ***
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