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 isnatural; 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.
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.
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, callsit 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.
"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 itisnot 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 autohypnotized, 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 otherproofs 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 gonehence 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 conscientiousbelief, 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 ofthe 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.
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 tardrugs 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, verylikely 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 positivelyand 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.
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 achesand 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.
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 oneswallows 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 isprevalent 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 orbulldogmatics, 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 butsorifs. 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 onethere 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.
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 mustput 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 yourreligious 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.
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; hepokes 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'.
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 justthe 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.
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 pointof 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 theseancients 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 cityof 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.
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 inthe 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.
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, slap-*stick 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.
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 goodteam 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.
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 comesthe 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.