miling
face: "Oh! but I took great care of myself all through it: I always
went to bed early, and rested when it was possible. I was careful to
eat only nourishing food, and to have exercise and fresh air when I
could get them. You see I knew that the work must be accomplished, and
that if I were over-tired I could not do it well." The work, instead of
fatiguing, had evidently refreshed her.

If that same woman had insisted, as many have in similar cases, that
she had no time to think of herself; or if such care had seemed to her
selfish, her work could not have been done as well, she would have
ended it tired and jaded, and would have declared to sympathizing
friends that it was "impossible to do a work like that without being
all tired out," and the sympathizing friends would have agreed and
thought her a heroine.

A well-known author, who had to support his wife and family while
working for a start in his literary career, had a commercial position
that occupied him every day from nine to five. He came home and dined
at six, went to bed at seven, slept until three, when he got up, made
himself a cup of coffee, and wrote until he breakfasted at eight. He
got all the exercise he needed in walking to and from his outside work
and was able to keep up this regular routine, with no loss of health,
until he could support his family comfortably on what he earned from
his pen. Then he returned to ordinary hours.

A brain once roused will take a man much farther than his strength; if
this man had come home tired and allowed himself to write far into the
night, and then, after a short sleep, had gone to the indispensable
earning of his bread and butter, the chances are that his intellectual
power would have decreased, until both publishers and author would have
felt quite certain that he had no power at all.

The complacent words, "I cannot think of myself," or, "It is out of the
question for me to care for myself," or any other of the various forms
in which the same idea is expressed, come often from those who are
steadily thinking of themselves, and, as a natural consequence, are so
blinded that they cannot see the radical difference between unselfish
care for one's self, as a means to an end, and the selfish care for
one's self which has no other object in view.

The wholesome care is necessary to the best of all good work. The
morbid care means steady decay for body and soul.

We should care for our bodies as a violin